Committee:
Professor Rethy Chhem, Chair
Professor Harold Cook, Member
Professor Laurence Monnais, Member

Sponsors:
The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College of London, UK
The University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada
The Schulich School of Medicine, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada

Registration information: Please contact Lesley Perlman at lperlman@khmerstudies.org

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

JANUARY 8th 2006

16:00-17:00 Early registration

JANUARY 9th 2006

7:30-8:30 Registration

8:30
Welcoming Address and Opening, Prof. Rethy CHHEM
General Introduction, Prof. Hal COOK & Laurence MONNAIS

9:00-11:00 Session 1
Historical Perspectives on Medical Traditions in Southeast Asia

Rethy CHHEM, University of Western Ontario (London, Canada)
“Bhaisajyaguru and Tantric medicine in Jayavarman VII (1181-1220 CE) hospitals”

Christophe POTTIER, Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
“Looking for Angkor hospitals”

Frédéric BOURDIER, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) (Paris, France)
“Some Historical and Theoretical Issues Based on a Classical Indian Medicine: The Science of Siddha in Tamil Nadu”

Nurdeng DEURASEH, Universiti Putra Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
“The Impact of Medicine of the Prophet and Practices on Malay Traditional Medicine in Malaysia”

11:30-12:30 Session 2
From Mapping “Tropical” Diseases in Southeast Asia to Fighting Against Them

Peter BOOMGAARD, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) (Leiden, The Netherlands)
“Syphilis, Gonorrhoea, and Yaws in the Indonesian Archipelago, 1500-1950”

LEE Jong-Chan, Harvard-Yenching Institute (Cambridge, USA)
“Locating and Mapping Tropical Diseases in Southeast Asia. A Historical Geography Perspective”

14:00-15:00 Session 2 (bis)
From Mapping “Tropical” Diseases in Southeast Asia to Fighting Against Them

Thomas B. COLVIN (Mexico/ Philippines)
“Arms around the world: The introduction of smallpox vaccine into the Philippines and Macau in 1805”

C. Michele THOMPSON, Southern Connecticut State University (New Haven, USA)
“Jean Marie Despiau: Much Maligned French Physician in the Royal Medical Service of the Nguyen Dynasty”

15:30-17:00 Session 3
 “Medical Encounters” in Colonial Southeast Asia (1)
Medicalisation and Social Control in the Context of Western Domination

Warwick ANDERSON, University of Wisconsin (Madison, USA)
“The hospital as colonial microcosm: conflict and corruption at the Philippine general hospital”

Hans POLS, University of Sydney (Sydney, Australia)
“The Nature of the Native Mind. Contested Views of Dutch Colonial Psychiatrists in the former Dutch East Indies in 1924”

Michael G. VANN, California State University (Sacramento, USA)
“Hanoi in the Time of Cholera: Epidemic Disease and Racial Power in the Colonial City”

18:00-20:00  Cocktail at FCC Angkor

JANUARY 10th 2006

Raquel REYES, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) (London, UK)
“Science and Superstition: pregnancy and birth in 19th century Philippines”

Sokhieng AU, University of California (Berkeley, USA)
"Motherhood and Medical Work in French Colonial Cambodia"

11:00-12:30 Session 5
International Health Care and History of Health Care in Southeast Asia

Annick GUÉNEL, CNRS - LASEMA (Paris, France)
“The Conference on Rural Hygiene in Bandung of 1937 : towards a new vision of health care ?”

HUANG Yu-Ling, State University of New York at Binghamton (Binghamton, USA)
“AIDS, Access to Essential Medicines and Global Patent Regime: The Case of Thailand”

LIEW Kai Khiun, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London (London, UK)
“Patron and partner, the “Quiet Americans”: The activities of the Rockefeller Foundation’s, International Health Board in Southeast Asia (1915-1940)”

14:00-15:30 Session 6 Traditional Medicines vs Biomedicine in Southeast Asia: Some Pluridisciplinary Perspectives

Pollie BITH-MELANDER, San Jose State University (San José, USA)
“Cambodian Health Care History: Khmer Medicine, the Language of healing, and AIDS Therapy”

D. Kyle LATINIS, HeritageWatch/ Royal University of Fine Arts (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)
"Medicinal knowledge transfer in Maluku, East Indonesia"

Ayo WAHLBERG, BIOS/ London School of Economics (London, UK)
“A revolutionary movement to bring traditional medicine back to the grassroots level” – on the bio-politicisation of herbal medicine in Vietnam”

Like its counterparts and models in the United States, the American colonial hospital was both a reflection of its social and political circumstances and a place apart. In this paper, I examine events at the Philippine General Hospital in Manila, from its opening in 1911 until its effective “Filipinization” after 1916. A locus of patient care and treatment, it was also a site of indoctrination, conflict, and contestation. Conflicts soon emerged between the colonial state and the American doctors at the hospital, and between white and Filipino physicians, and doctors and nurses. These disputes tended to reproduce the fissures already evident within American colonial culture, as well as to draw upon conventionally racialized images of colonizer and colonized. Yet the distinctive institutional culture of the colonial hospital also shaped the character and outcome of such conflict. I will focus on the 1912 investigation into irregularities at the hospital, and the 1916 poisoning (with corrosive sublimate) of the hospital’s American director.

Motivations for French colonial medical interest in Khmer women and methods used to intervene in female health bear on wider historiographical arguments in Cambodian history, gender studies, the history of medicine. This paper makes two major arguments in relation to these topics. Firstly, the colonial engagement in women's health in Cambodia is closely tied to maternalist movements in the West. Just as scholarship in the context of France and America has demonstrated, we find in the colonial context that changing state populationist ideologies were attempting to redefine reproduction and childrearing. Further, concerns with male and population health ultimately motivated colonial efforts to improve female health. In other words, healthy women were deemed necessary to a healthy military and a productive workforce. While political constituency shaped the contours of medical intervention in France, public constituency at the very least influenced its tone in Cambodia.  This brings us to a second and perhaps more significant argument about the nature of women's medical intervention in colonial Cambodia. Efforts to draw women to French medicine and to train them as medical care providers and the ultimate failure of these attempts expose the contradictions between the "modern" and "traditional" role of women in Cambodia. This paper questions the common trope in Southeast Asian studies of a precolonial "golden era" of female gender equality that has been weakened by the intrusion of colonialism, modernity and capitalism. In contrast to such existing scholarship, this paper approaches with caution any assumptions of a sexually egalitarian precolonial Southeast Asian society. Rather, a history of medical intervention reveals rather that efforts to draw indigenous women to the French medical service as both providers and patients failed in large part because of significant differences and inequalities in existing masculine and feminine roles.

This paper provides an overview of the Cambodian health care system in order to shed light into the current support and care for people living with AIDS. This paper discusses the importance of health care since at least 12th century.
Research method included literature review, and a semi-structured questionnaire was used to interview traditional healers. Traditional healers and their various roles, and their response to AIDS care and support, will be discussed. The language of healing played a key role in terms of displaying who was in control of the event. I will discuss this subject by providing three specific cases of healers who were possessed by different spirits and their methods of diagnosing diseases and treatments. I will conclude by identifying some plants used for AIDS therapy, as well as examining their bioscientific importance.

It is well known that America was hit very hard by the diseases coming from Europe from 1492 onward. Something similar happened much later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, when many Pacific islands came into frequent contact with Europeans. In this paper I will address the question whether something similar happened in the Indonesian Archipelago after 1500. I will suggest that this was not the case to the same degree because Indonesia was already part of the Eurasian 'civilised disease pool'. Nevertheless, there appear to have been two diseases that were new to the region in the 16th century - syphilis and yaws. It stands to reason that these diseases must have had some impact.

Even if it incorporates many of the principles related to Ayurveda, one of the most well-known classical Indian medicines, the science of Siddha differs in many aspects. Etymologically, Siddha signifies the one who has reached both perfection and immortality. Mythologies, abundant and contradictories, explain that this more than 2000 year old scholarly tradition has been elaborated by eighteen civaist holy men (called cittar) who managed to acquire what is called the universal knowledge by analysing the fundamental principles of the nature. The underlying idea is that while both human beings and components of nature reflect similar ways of functioning, the person who manages to know the secrets of the nature will master the secrets of the man. The Siddha practitioner is a yogi, an ascetic and an alchemist who is in position to gain extraordinary powers due to his control over any material substance and due to his esoteric knowledge. Origins still remain obscure and highly controversial because most of the ancient writings have disappeared. Thirumullar’s (one of most famous Cittar) compendium remains however the main treatise presently discovered and acts as a reference.
Cittar’s cosmology appears original, even revolutionary when the protagonists do claim in an orthodox country like India that world is unique and that God is nothing more than the light existing within each human being. More again either cast system, racial or colour discrimination do not have any meaning. They are mere inventions undertaken by some persons in order to manipulate the others. Every human being gets all potentialities, including healing capacity and the possibility to emancipate himself from death. In that respect, far from being a revealed medicine like Ayurveda, the science of the Cittar constitutes a progressive knowledge in constant evolution acquired by exceptional persons who, retrospectively, have the duty to use it for the benefit of the others.
The place granted to humeral theories does not have the same tremendous importance that it has in Ayurveda. The Siddha tradition attributes a particular attention to a certain number of “points” (chakra) located in the subtle body. This dichotomy in the body conception (between physic and subtle) generates a different representation of anatomy and physiology, in particular the existence of canals (nadi) that are to some extent similar with the meridians in acupuncture. The disease is therefore a consequence of an unbalanced circulation of the vital flow – or energy - through the nadi that interconnect all chakra and make them interfering constantly. Here comes the importance of the respiration control through the techniques of pranayama and hata-yoga (two branches of Yoga) insofar as they can regulate, adjust, temper or increase the energy which is circulating in the body. Subsequently, humeral disequilibrium becomes the consequence of an improper circulation of the vital energy, but never the direct cause of the disease.
Three main categories of therapy prevail: benign pathologies are cured by common drugs such as plants or minerals, without danger and liable to be prescribed by most of the vernacular practitioners. Other diseases, more serious, require a particular attention and need sophisticated remedies. Last, severe diseases sometimes considered as not being controlled either by Ayurveda or biomedicine can be treated with the help of “miraculous” remedies whose confection, utilisation and dosage imply extremely scrupulous handlings. Only accomplished Siddha physicians are in position, due to their deep experiences, practices and incessant researchs, to create and provide such uncommon treatments. The specificity of the chemical therapy resides in the sensitive use of metals called navarasam where mercury, lead, copper, precious and semi-precious stones do play a preponderant place. Particular techniques like the transmutation of metals and complex processes like “podhamisation” (consisting in modifying the structure of the mineral in order to intensify its healing power and to facilitate its penetration within the human body) constitute a part of the package of the advanced Siddha practitioner. Interestingly, quests for the ideal drug and for the universal panacea induce the physicians to practice similar investigations like the ones undertaken by alchemists in the Middle-age in Western countries. The mercury (rasam), symbolically associated with Shiva’s semen, is supposed to be the irreducible form for any material substance and its medical potential is unlimited if someone could manage to master its properties and discover exactly how to measure it along with other adequate products (kapla) that accompany and strengthen its efficiency.

The purpose of this talk is to demonstrate the role and influence of the Bhaisajyaguru (Medicine Buddha) on the medical theories and practices in the royal-sponsored hospitals at the end of the 12th century CE, when tantric Mahayana Buddhism prevailed in Angkor. During this period, the newly crowned King  Jayavarman 7, after having expulsed the Chams from Angkor, started an ambitious program to rebuilt the chattered Kingdom that include the foundations of monastic Buddhist universities, dharmasala and 102 arogyasala (hospital). In this new era, the cult of many Mahayana deities flourished all over the kingdom, among them Avalokitesvara and Bhaisajyaguru. The representation of the Bhaisajyaguru, his mandala and the symbolism of the number 102 will be discussed. Two aspects of medical practices will be described to demonstrate the influence of tantric Buddhism on Angkorian medicine. This study used sereral sources that include archaeological and iconographical data as well as Khmer medical manuscripts and Sanskrit inscriptions.

On September 3, 1803, King Carlos IV of Spain issued a remarkable decree:  The Spanish Crown would send an expedition to all of its colonies to convey the newly discovered smallpox vaccine to his loyal subjects, with all expenses absorbed by the Crown and its colonial governments.Spanish physician.
Francisco Xavier Balmis was selected as expedition director, based on his proposal to utilize young boys as live vaccine carriers.  Balmis also was charged with the responsibility of training vaccination practitioners along the way and to set up Vaccination Boards to preserve and administer the vaccine down through the years.  Among his staff was Isabel Cendala, the first international nurse in history.
While the history of the expedition's experience in the American colonies has been well documented, the Asian portion has not been fully examined.  This paper, based on documents newly uncovered in Spain, Mexico, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Macau, will explore the progress of the expedition in the Philippines, the difficulties in the expedition's return to Mexico, and the success of the Philippine Vaccination Board throughout the 19th century.  The paper will also touch briefly on the introduction of the vaccine into Macao and its subsequent, controversial introduction into China.

This research explores the impact of medicine of the Prophet (al-tibb al-nabawi) on   Malay traditional medicine. The medicine of the Prophet exists for thousands of years and widely practiced in Malay world including Malaysia. Crucial question addressed in this research include: how far did medicine of the Prophet extend in the Malay world for public health and preventive medicine? What effects did Medicine of the Prophet interventions have on peoples' health? To find out the answer, the followings will be included in my research: Qur’anic Verses and Du`a (Prayer) as Method of Treatment; Ruqyah in Malay Traditional Medicine; Honey is Healing for Men; Cupping (al-Hijamah); Cauterization; Purification of the Soul; Adab (Manner) of Eating and drinking; Worship (Ibadah); Magic; Using Jinn and other Unseen creatures for medical purposes.

In 1937, the Eastern Bureau of the League of Nations Health Organisation, based in Singapore, organized a conference on rural hygiene in Bandung. This conference followed an earlier similar meeting which had been held in 1931 in Paris and had brought together the European members of the League of Nations. The Bandung conference included all the Asian countries from India to Japan. It was organized with difficulty, after lenghty negogations, since several nations, reluctant to furnish information about health conditions and the organization of sanitary services in their countries, took a long time to hand in their preliminary reports. Regardless of how accurate they were, these reports probably give the most complete picture of the sanitary situation in the region on the eve of the World War II : they bring together data concerning nutritional status of the populations, epidemic and transmissible diseases, and other health data, as well as information about medical facilities and training in each country. The appraisal drawn up by each country served also as a sort of blueprint for the possibilities of improvement, especially through various reforms of the structure and organization of public health. In the context of an international meeting, some of the ideas which emerged from the conference were quite new, such as the recognition of the usefulness of certain traditional healers. But most of the recommendations which came out of the conference went unheeded, partly because the goverments, most of them under colonial rule, were not ready to enter into fundamental reforms, but also because of the war and the following new world order. Nonetheless, the recommendations prefigured instructions that the WHO was to launch much later.
After a brief survey of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the Eastern Bureau, and of the organization of the conference, I will use the preliminary reports to examine some of the differences and similarities among the health systems of Southeast Asian countries. The other participant countries, China, India and Japan, played of course an important role in the conference. My regional limitation, however, is not due only to the geographical frame of this forthcoming colloquium. Southeast Asia includes countries which were governed by different colonial regimes, as well as a never-colonized country, Thailand, formerly Siam. I will offer possible points of comparison between these regimes. Then I will explore the relationship between the regional context (historical, political, cultural…) and the “reformist” tendency, as it appeared during the Bandung conference. I will focus particularly on Vietnam, about which I have the best documentation. Finally, using the example of Vietnam, I will end with some thoughts about the impact of the Eastern Bureau, a beranch of one of the earliest public health organizations.

In 1851 the Dutch colonial government established a doctor’s school for indigenous young men in Batavia, the capital of the Dutch Indies. At this so-called dokter djawaschool the students received a western medical training from Dutch military doctors (officers of health). After graduation the so called dokters djawa were supposed to attend to the indigenous patients. The people, however, were used to the services of the indigenous healers, the doekoens. Only when the doekoens medications and ministrations failed, did they consult the dokters djawa.
How did these newcomers position themselves in the medical market and what was their attitude towards the native healers? Did they consider them as colleagues or as competitors? Or were they convinced, because of their western training, of the superiority of western medical knowledge so that they rejected everything that relied on eastern medicine and therefore considered the doekoens as dangerous charlatans?
The problem in answering these questions is that it is very difficult to gauge the opinions of the dokters djawa because nearly all known sources are written by European men instead of the graduates themselves. One of the few exceptions is the Tijdschrift voor Inlandsche Geneeskundigen (Journal for indigenous medical practitioners), which appeared from 1893 till 1922. In answering my question I will analyse the 24 articles in this journal in which the dokters djawa mentioned the doekoen. While sources detailing the attitudes of dokter djawa are scarce, documentation regarding the perceptions of the doekoens is non-existent. Hence, only one side of the picture can be shown. 

The devastating HIV/AIDS is the greatest crisis of public health in the twentieth first century. Following sub-Saharan Africa, the infected population in Southeast Asia has increased dramatically in this decade. More than 1 million people have been infected with HIV/AIDS in Thailand, a country with over 63 millions people. Thailand has made effective progress in the fight against AIDS through some national strategies such as 100 per cent condom promotion program, prevention programs for injecting drug users, and increasing accessibility to antiretroviral therapy.
This paper focuses on the third factor, access to essential medicines, and examines the complex relationship of public health, intellectual property protection, and global governing in the case of Thailand. The paper traces historically the process since 1980s that how United States uses its economic pressure to force Thai government’s amendments of the patent laws to fit the US-style patent protection. The 1994 Agreement Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) under World Trade Organization (WTO) encourages the protectionism and exclusionism for intellectual property rights. The strengthened patent protection of pharmaceutical industry and raising prices of essential drugs make people in developing countries more vulnerable to the pandemic such as HIV/AIDS.
In fight against the global patent regime, several developing countries, including Thailand, have initiated the ‘access to essential medicines’ campaign and the Doha Declaration of 2001 can be treated as a success of the campaign. However, in the post-TRIPS era, Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is becoming another tool of US government to reassure the intellectual property protection in developing countries, hence, creating more obstacles to cheaper essential drugs and public health. The case of Thailand shows the limitation and resistance of developing countries when they struggle between the public health and intellectual property protection. The paper argues that the challenges of HIV/AIDS pandemic in Southeast Asia cannot be understood completely without concerning the public health and its relations with global intellectual property protection, international laws, and U.S. pressure.

The objective of my paper is to explore into how Southeast Asia has historically served as an ‘international filter’ in blocking out the spread of tropical diseases from India and Africa to Far Eastern countries and Australia by taking a cartographical view of distribution of some tropical diseases. It consists of two parts: first, the role of the Dutch in shaping medical topography of the diseases in Southeast Asia, and second, mapping geographical distribution of the diseases in the region.
As Malacca, regarded as the capital of sea silk-road, became an important ‘contact zone’ where European, Asian and Australian people had fostered commercial interests since the seventeenth century, various tropical epidemics broke out in the area and its neighboring regions. The Dutch East India Company (VOC), which was the most active among them, extended its tropical vision from Goa, its base camp in India to Nagasaki, Japan’s window to the Southeast Asia. My paper will show how commercial activities of the VOC had geographically juxtaposed with the spread of tropical diseases in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Furthermore, I will discuss how the VOC’s medical experience of Southeast Asian tropical diseases affected the early formation of Western medicine in Japan.
The second part of my paper will illuminate a cartographic view of some tropical diseases in Southeast Asia and its relations with Europe, Africa, Far Eastern countries, and Australia. More than thirty maps on geographical distribution of the diseases will be represented to justify that Southeast Asia might function as a buffering zone in disseminating tropical diseases to Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Malaria, beriberi, leprosy, cholera, scarlet fever, dysentery, dengue, yellow fever, yaws, elephantiasis arabum, tropical abscess of the liver, and etc will be discussed in the paper.
Interpreting a history of tropical diseases in Southeast Asia from a geographical perspective, the paper comes to conclusion that geographical perception of diseases is so interconnected with historical framing of disease that medical historians’ writing becomes more powerful for recognizing regional histories of medicine in the global context.

There are several types of traditional medical treatments for various illnesses (mental and physical) in Maluku, east Indonesia.  Many use medicines derived from local plants, animals and oils.  Others use incantations and sacred objects, often coupled with locally derived medicines.
Specific medicinal knowledge to treat a particular illness is often "owned" by a particular family.  For example, maybe a few families in a single village or a cluster of villages prepare medicine for high blood pressure, malaria, etc. The preparation and treatment is often handed down to family member apprentices, although apprentices outside the family lineage may engage in training when allowed.  These are often kept secret and it is difficult to entice individuals to describe recipes and procedures,  unless you have been accepted into the family.  The secretiveness is considered to harbor power, yet may hinder scientific research.
Modern medicines such as antibiotics are considered powerful, but traditional medicines and healing practices performed by respected local professionals are still viewed as more powerful.
With increased use of motorcycles and the increased rate of bone fractures and skin lesions associated with motorcycle accidents, bone healers (setters) have increased their business exponentially.  Previously, treefall was the most common cause of bone breakage.
These subjects and others will be discussed in the following presentation. 

The involvement of the International Health Board (IHB) of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) in Southeast Asia before 1941 was part of its plans to eradicate hookworm disease alongside with improving rural hygiene and promoting public health education. Aside from the American colony of The Philippines, the RF representatives also launched joint public health surveys and campaigns with the national and colonial governments in the rest of Southeast Asia. In the process, the RF representatives faced many challenges in implementing the vision of their Foundation in the region. Used to more authoritarian public health measures of compulsion, the emphasis of bringing public health education through new media especially film or “moving images” was novel to local authorities. Added to this, the principle of IHB funding and projects were inclined towards partnership with local health authorities rather than that of a patron-client relationship. This underpinned the insistence of the RF that ultimate responsibility of public health lay in the government. Related to this principle was also the persistent reminder to the RF field representatives to pitch their involvement as in the most understated manner.
Thus, the nature of IHB activities differed in the various territories in Southeast Asia. This ranged from being dragged into political tensions between the different ministries in Thailand, the suspicion of British authorities in Malaya to the resistance of Dutch medical officials to the public health campaigns. In areas like British Burma and French Indo-China, the RF officers concluded from preliminary surveys of the inadequacies of the local health infrastructure to support the IHB projects. The legacy of the RF would provide a more historical understanding towards the interaction between Western based health movements and NGOs in the expansion of modern medical practices into Southeast Asia. In addition, the seemingly politically subtle and culturally odourless approaches of the RF serves to provide a refreshing dimension to various manifestations of American influence in the region.   

Opium is a reddish-brown heavy-scented addictive drug prepared from the extracted juice of the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum). In medicine opium is used as an analgesic and narcotic. Its properties of effecting a soothing or even a stupefying feeling offers a respite to sufferers of chronic pain, victims of depression or individuals needing to ‘escape’ everyday realities made opium a traded commodity. Opium’s addictive effect ensured that consumers relied on a regular supply consequently making the opium trade a lucrative enterprise. Moreover when Great Britain begun substituting opium for silver in its commercial dealings with Imperial China in the later part of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, opium became an important item in the economy of Asia including Southeast Asia.
The mid-19th century witnessed an influx of Chinese coolies from the southern provinces of Imperial China to the tin-bearing fields of Perak, Selangor and Sungei Ujong on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula. Chinese syndicates (‘secret societies’) monopolized the labour industry from recruitment of Chinese coolies from the southeastern Chinese treaty ports to the British Straits Settlements of Penang and Singapore and thence to the tin mining districts on the peninsula. For entertainment the overworked coolie placed his hope to escape drudgery on the gambling table, drowned in liquor (arrack), blissfully smoked the addictive opium, and consorted with the inmates of brothels. The syndicates possessed a tight rein on all these recreational activities and reaped immense profits in being the contractors (‘farmers’) of opium and arrack monopolies.
The habit of opium smoking also pervaded the upper classes of urban Chinese society of Penang, Melaka and Singapore. Initially common amongst the old and the infirmed of the well-to-do, the opium habit spread to leisure seeking younger members of rich households. Opium addiction towards the end of the 19th century had increasingly become a serious social ill with addicts numbering amongst coolies to towkay (entrepreneurs, proprietors of business house), in towns and in the interior districts.
In the last quarter of the 19th century two prominent Straits Chinese British-educated doctors Dr Lim Boon Keng of Singapore and Dr Wu Lien-teh of Penang championed the anti-opium campaign. Opposing the anti-opium campaigners were powerful individuals, vested interest groups and institution, viz. the colonial British government, holders of opium monopolies, and the powerful Chinese syndicates.
Far from delivering a narrative of the development of the anti-opium campaign in colonial British Malaya, particular focus is to evaluate the role played by Dr Lim Boon Keng and Dr Wu Lien-teh including the motives behind their anti-opium crusade. Both viewed opium addiction not only of its baneful effects in regards to public health but also in terms of Chinese nationalism and patriotism.

In 1924, two European psychiatrists working in the former Dutch East Indies, P.H.M. Travaglino and F.H. van Loon, gave presentations on the nature of the native mind. Basing themselves on their experience in treating mentally ill Indonesians, they presented theories on the nature of the normal Indonesian mind and presented extensive political conclusions from their views. Their theories were commonplace in colonial psychiatry: the natives were child-like, emotional, erratic, and their cognitive and intellectual functions were underdeveloped. They were therefore in need of firm guidance, which could be provided by the colonial powers.
The reaction to these talks by radical Dutch intellectuals and Indonesians was far from commonplace. In newspaper articles, journal articles, letters, and pamphlets they attacked the views presented by Travaglino and van Loon. They questioned whether it was possible to make inferences on the nature of normal individuals on the basis of insights derived from the treatment of mental illness and whether it was possible to understand mental processes without an adequate knowledge of the language and the culture of Indonesians. They did not attack the project of developing a psychology of Indonesians but felt that these two psychiatrists had drawn false conclusions on a far from perfect basis.
The immediate background for the activism of Indonesian physicians and medical students was their experience at the medical school for the training of indigenous physicians (the ASTOVIA@) in Batavia (Jakarta). The school was known as a hotbed of nationalism. The critique against the two European psychiatrists was presented by a number of physicians who were active in the nationalists movements which proliferated in the Dutch East Indies in the 1910s and 1920s. In this paper I will analyse the critique on the psychiatric project of colonial Dutch psychiatry and the background of the physicians who formulated it. 

World famous for its romantic cliché of ruined temples abandoned under an heavy tropical forest, the site of Angkor has been usually known and investigated through its monumental or stylistic aspects, coupled with limited remaining historical and epigraphic sources. Some cases however provide detailed accounts of operation of religious and public institutions. But most of these institutions have never been identified and localized exactly, making it very rare to have an opportunity to compare on the same spot data from epigraphy and field archaeology.
Yet it is the case of the 4 hospitals built in the end of 12th century by Jayavarman VII, last of the great Khmer monarchs, at his newly created capital Angkor Thom, among over a hundred to be built elsewhere in the Kingdom. Location of these 4 hospitals are well known since the twenties when their stone “chapels” and foundation stele where found outside each entrance of square city of Angkor Thom. But no investigation ever took place in their precincts where the hospital should have been settled.
Such an archaeological research titled “Angkor Medieval Hospitals Archaeological Project” will start in January 2006, focusing first on the western hospital of Angkor Thom with an international team conducted by Dr C. Pottier, (Head of EFEO in Siemreap), Prof. R.K. Chhem, (U Western Ontario) and Prof Alan Kolata, (U Chicago).
This paper will present an assessment of the present knowledge about these Angkor Thom hospitals, both from epigraphic and architectural data. It will then give an overview of the archaeological project. 

During the last four decades of the 19th century, developments in colonial medicine seriously challenged the traditions and practices of indigenous folk medicine. In 1871 the first faculty of medicine in the Philippines was founded in Manila at the University of Santo Tomas, offering courses in modern obstetrics and gynaecology, and training in midwifery.  Several popular manuals were published in the vernacular on the care of post-partum mothers and newborn infants, and hospitals in Manila, especially the Hospital San Juan de Dios, opened lying-in dispensaries for indigent women.  In the 1880s and 1890s, Filipino obstetricians and gynaecologists returning from their medical studies in Europe, introduced pioneering obstetrical procedures (eg. curettage, the Caesarean section and embryotomy) and employed the latest obstetrical and gynaecological instruments (the vaginal speculum and the obstetrical chair). Indigenous concepts and practices, particularly in relation to the care of pregnant and parturient women, were vigorously disparaged and dismissed by both Filipino and foreign physicians as pernicious and dangerous ‘superstitions’.
This paper will explore the struggle to impose scientific reason upon Filipino folk medicine, its practitioners and its treatments in relation to pregnancy and birth. First, the paper will show the ways in which folk medical knowledge of the sexualised body both resisted and adapted to the innovations of biomedical science; and secondly it will examine how female sexuality and women’s bodies became pathologised and medicalised by the introduction of gynaecology, the establishment of specialist physicians and clinics, and the designation of special wards in hospitals for the treatment of women’s diseases.

Jean Marie Despiau, from the town of Brazas in Gironde France, first arrived in Vietnam in 1795.  He became a member of the medical service for the military forces of Nguyen Anh, later Emperor Gia Long.  At that time Nguyen Anh was involved in a brutal civil war which resulted, after his victory, in the establishment of the Nguyen Dynasty in 1802.  After this Dr. Despiau became a member of the Nguyen Dynasty Palace Medical Service and he served under Emperors Gia Long and Minh Mang until he died in 1824.  Minh Mang expelled all other Frenchmen from his court yet Despiau remained with his position and the evident affection of members of the royal family.  No other European held a permanent position in the court of the Nguyen Dynasty between Dr. Despiau's death and the forcible colonization of Vietnam by the French ending in 1883.  Dr Despiau’s major medical accomplishment during his service with the Nguyen was undoubtedly his journey to Macau and his transfer to the royal court at Hue of active smallpox vaccine.  It is known for certain that Despiau managed to keep his vaccine going for at least six months after his return from Macau, an astonishing feat given the circumstances.  This indicates that Despiau was a very skilled scientist and physician.
However, in the rare history of the period that even mentions Despiau his skills, intelligence, and general moral character are invariably denigrated.  This paper will explore the historiographic reasons for this and will rehabilitate Dr. Despiau’s reputation.  The story of Jean Marie Despiau's career in Vietnam offers insights into the Vietnamese royal medical service and into the tensions between the Nguyen Dynasty and expanding European colonial powers.

In the early 20th Century, the French colonial administration in Indochina was particularly nervous about potential Cholera epidemics. Due in part to metropolitan France’s own experience with the disease but also viewing the tropical world as inherently more biologically dangerous than Europe, the colonial state put all its resources into fighting Cholera outbreaks. By examining the 1910, 1927, and 1937 epidemics, this paper explores the growth of the colonial state. This paper argues that a racialized worldview structured the growth of the state’s intrusive and interventionist powers. It inferred in the lives of Vietnamese and Chinese in ways which it dared not to do so with Europeans nor would have dared to do at home in France. The exploration of colonial health policies in Hanoi reveals the growth of a form of French modernism that prefigured and may have contributed to French fascism under Vichy. In short, colonial medical policies in Southeast contributed to the growth of forms of state power that had repercussions with a global reach. This paper also notes that, despite the intrusive and overwhelming power of the state, colonial medical policies, while not entirely ineffective, were not the universal solution to Hanoi’s health crisis and clearly exacerbated local political conflicts. Most importantly, the colonial state privileged the rights, privacy, and property of whites over non-whites, demonstrating white privilege but frustrating Asians and contributing to anti-colonialist agitation. Hence colonial medical policies presented both opportunities and obstacles for the state.

Although it is China’s longstanding medical traditions and practices that have received most scholarly attention in the East Asian region over the past fifty years or so, Vietnam has experienced a similar traditional medicine "revival" that can be traced back to late President Ho Chi Minh’s 1955 appeal “to study means of uniting the effects of oriental remedies with those of Europe”. In this paper, I argue that whilst the Vietnamese case bears many parallels to a number of other ‘developing countries’ in this respect, Vietnam’s ancient history of medicine, prolonged postcolonial isolation and far-reaching health delivery network have allowed for a unique public health strategy that encourages rural populations to become self-sufficient in the traditional herbal treatment of their most common illnesses. Importantly, I show how the development of this strategy has relied on an ongoing bio-politicisation of traditional herbal medicine as an object of expert bodies of knowledge (e.g. botanical, pharmacological, anthropological, phytochemical) that make authoritative, albeit often contested, claims as to what constitutes the "proper", "safe" and "effective" practice and use of these medicines.