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Social History of Medicine Advance Access published online on February 3, 2009
Social History of Medicine, doi:10.1093/shm/hkn094
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved.

Paul Ehrlich's Colonial Connections: Scientific Networks and Sleeping Sickness Drug Therapy Research, 1900–1914

Deborah Neill*

* York University, 4700 Keele St., Atkinson 625, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3, Canada. E-mail: dneill{at}yorku.ca


  Abstract

Summary Between 1900 and 1914, a major sleeping sickness epidemic arose in many parts of Africa. Despite the competitive nature of European science in this period, the German immunologist Paul Ehrlich developed a collaborative transnational network of researchers and clinicians who worked together to carry out drug therapy trials on sleeping sickness patients in numerous African colonies. This kind of collaboration was possible when researchers shared complementary goals, and collectively this network played a significant role in shaping part of the European response to controlling an epidemic disease in Africa. Together with demonstrating how and why Ehrlich and his partners cooperated across nations and borders in their search for a drug that would cure the disease, this essay also explores what effect the drug trials had on African patients in Entebbe, British Uganda, and in Brazzaville, the capital of French Equatorial Africa.

Keywords: Transnational networks; human trypanosomiasis; sleeping sickness; Paul Ehrlich; Africa


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