Medicine3

“German science should not be left behind in the all-round fight against sleeping sickness (a Portuguese mission has also been active for several years). The combined efforts of English, French, Portuguese and German doctors will hopefully succeed in mastering this murderous epidemic, which also seriously threatens our colonies.”

Robert Koch (1904):"On sleeping sickness (letter to the Minister of Spiritual, Educational and Medical Affairs)"

Robert Koch (1843-1910) was a German microbiologist and is considered one of the pioneers of bacteriological research. He achieved worldwide fame through his discoveries of pathogens, including the tuberculosis bacterium (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and the cholera pathogen (Vibrio cholerae), which earned him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905.

Medical research played a key role in colonialism. According to the former director of the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine (University of Heidelberg), Africa could never have been colonized in this way without the progress made in the fight against malaria and other diseases (SRF, 04.02.2021). From 1906 to 1906, Robert Koch experimented with the arsenical agent Atoxyl in what is now Uganda. He was aware that Atoxyl is dangerous in high doses. Koch injected the drug at intervals of seven to ten days, accepting pain, blindness and the death of thousands of people (ibid.). The sick were held in so-called concentration camps. Koch took the concept of the concentration camp from the British colonizers of South Africa, who imprisoned political opponents in these camps (Bauche 2006). The camps served as a place of isolation for the sick to prevent the spread of disease, but also as a research facility where people were forced to undergo medical experiments "Since precise observation over a longer period of time is possible in the concentration camps, it is here that the most recommendable mode of atoxyl treatment can be found and, for example, a staged therapy can be tested" (Robert Koch quoted from Bauche 2006).

*Manuela Bauche 2006: Robert Koch, sleeping sickness and human experiments in colonial East Africa. In: Freiburg Postcolonial/Orte

1904