My research on the history of health, healing and medicine is animated by a series of intriguing questions, all helping a growing number of UW-Madison students better grasp global health issues. What was it like to be a patient in a hospital established by British medical missionaries in East Africa in the early 20th century? Or at one run by British colonial officials? Or at a healer’s shrine in one the villages surrounding these hospitals?
About the scholar
Neil Kodesh is a professor in the Department of History. His research and teaching focus on the history of East Africa, with a particular focus on medical history, historical anthropology and multidisciplinary methodologies for writing African history. He is currently working on a historical ethnography of Mengo Hospital, the first hospital established in what today is Uganda.
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How did patients perceive and understand the treatment they received in these different spaces?
And, what was the relationship between deeply-rooted therapeutic practices and ideas in East Africa and those introduced by medical missionaries and colonial medical officers beginning in the late 19th century?
Interest in global health has grown tremendously during my 15 years at UW-Madison. Many students, particularly aspiring medical professionals, participate in global health field experiences in other countries as part of their degree programs.
I have led two such experiences in recent years: a three-week program in western Uganda for graduate students on the topic of mapping disease hotspots; and a monthlong program in Botswana for undergraduate students that focused on community and environmental health.
An historical perspective – one that both foregrounds the concerns of African communities and also considers the historical lineages of global health interventions in Africa – bridges the gap between past and present for future practitioners.
This approach also blurs the distinction between the local and the global, allowing us to better understand connections between our lives and conditions and those of people living in seemingly distant parts of the world.
This essay originally appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal’s Fueling Discovery section on May 4, 2020. Fueling Discovery is a special partnership between the Wisconsin State Journal and the College of Letters & Science.