ABSTRACT
T he observance of the one-hundred-year anniversary of the Spanish-American War has provoked numerous historical, literary, and sociological studies to examine the process of colonization that began with the transfer of power over Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States in 1898. Of particular note are the studies dedicated to investigating medicine’s participation in the U.S. colonization of the tropics. 1 In thematic terms, these analyses study the colonizing role of medicine and demonstrate how medicine contributed to the consolidation of U.S. hegemony over the invaded populations while also highlighting the preventive function of the medical discourse that facilitated Anglo-Saxon adaptation to the Caribbean milieu. These analyses tend to study rapid, mortal, epidemic diseases. Thus cholera, malaria, and yellow fever occupy a privileged role in revisions of medical history during the years immediately following 1898.
