“Localising Tropical Medicine”: A History of the Medical Research Institute (MRI) in Colonial Lagos, 1907–1920s

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Adedamola Seun Adetiba

Abstract

This article explores an early episode in the history of tropical medicine in colonial Lagos, British West Africa. It probes into the activities and outputs of scientists who operated within the Medical Research Institute (MRI) as a way to further complicate the agendas of tropical medicine. Scientists of the MRI undertook biomedical experimentation with a profound understanding of metropolitan and local imperatives as both determined the extent to which they contributed to popular discourses. The present paper explores the extent to which metropole-colony relations triggered local scientists at the MRI to resort to all available means, including human experimentation, in the course of ambitious scientific projects. In certain other contexts, international and local motivations converged to sway the ambivalent postures of colonial scientists to biomedical experimentation.

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How to Cite
Adetiba, A. S. (2021). “Localising Tropical Medicine”: A History of the Medical Research Institute (MRI) in Colonial Lagos, 1907–1920s. Modern Africa: Politics, History and Society, 9(1), 91–117. https://doi.org/10.26806/modafr.v9i1.366
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Author Biography

Adedamola Seun Adetiba, Department of History, Rhodes University, South Africa

He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History, Rhodes University, South Africa. His current project explores the positionality of African actors and institutions in colonial medical and sanitation systems, specifically by revealing the diverse modes of Western medical discourses in rural contexts of Western Nigeria. In this way he reimagines the margins of empire as sites of knowledge production and reconstruction. E-mail: damolascripts@gmail.com