The Steamer Parish
The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier
9780226302829
9780226302812
The Steamer Parish
The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier
In the mid-1800s, a group of High Anglicans formed the Universities’ Mission to Central Africa (UMCA). Inspired by Dr. David Livingstone, they felt a special calling to bring the Church, education, and medical care to rural Africans. To deliver services across a huge, remote area, the UMCA relied on steamer ships that were sent from England and then reassembled on Lake Malawi. By the mid-1920s, the UMCA had built a chain of mission stations that spread across four hundred miles.
In The Steamer Parish, Charles M. Good Jr. traces the Mission’s history and its lasting impact on public health care in south-central Africa-and shows how steam and medicine, together with theology, allowed the Mission to impose its will, indelibly, on hundreds of thousands of people. What’s more, many of the issues he discusses-rural development, the ecological history of disease, and competition between western and traditional medicine-are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago.
In The Steamer Parish, Charles M. Good Jr. traces the Mission’s history and its lasting impact on public health care in south-central Africa-and shows how steam and medicine, together with theology, allowed the Mission to impose its will, indelibly, on hundreds of thousands of people. What’s more, many of the issues he discusses-rural development, the ecological history of disease, and competition between western and traditional medicine-are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago.
440 pages | 26 halftones, 12 line drawings, 23 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2003
University of Chicago Geography Research Papers
Geography: Cultural and Historical Geography
History: African History
Religion: Religion and Society
Reviews
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
1. Christian Medical Missions and African Studies
2. The Lake Malawi Region: Forces of Change in the Late Nineteenth Century
3. The Return of the UMCA to Malawi: Technology and Political Relations in the Quest for Permanent Influence
4. Expanding the Steamer Parish: Ten Thousand Square Miles for Mission
5. Steamer Technology, Local Ecology, and Regional Economy
6. Health in Sub-Saharan Africa and Malawi on the Eve of Colonization
7. Medical Services for Missionaries and Africans
8. Gauging Change: African Health and Well-being
9. Treatment and Control: Limits and Contradictions of Science and Missionary Medicine
10. The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine
Bibliography
Index
Preface
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
1. Christian Medical Missions and African Studies
2. The Lake Malawi Region: Forces of Change in the Late Nineteenth Century
3. The Return of the UMCA to Malawi: Technology and Political Relations in the Quest for Permanent Influence
4. Expanding the Steamer Parish: Ten Thousand Square Miles for Mission
5. Steamer Technology, Local Ecology, and Regional Economy
6. Health in Sub-Saharan Africa and Malawi on the Eve of Colonization
7. Medical Services for Missionaries and Africans
8. Gauging Change: African Health and Well-being
9. Treatment and Control: Limits and Contradictions of Science and Missionary Medicine
10. The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine
Bibliography
Index