History of Diseases, History and Disease

It may seem surprising that diseases, as a subject-matter for study, have until now sparked so little interest among historians of tropical Africa, considering the many connections that can be supposed to exist between morbidity rates and other traditional subjects of Africanist research, such as migration, trade, contacts with the outside, and underpopulation. Indeed, disregarding the studies (a systematic survey of which has yet to be done) written by colonial administrators, doctors and missionaries and containing information and hypotheses about the history of one or several diseases in a specific region, ¹ historical research as such began in this field at a very late date. The first noteworthy efforts appeared only in the late 1960s, and were continued by the fairly sparse research of the following decade, in particular the works of S.M. Cissoko, J. Ford, C. Wondji, K.D. Patterson and G. Hartwig. ²