Sponsored by the Office for History of Science and Technology (UC Berkeley)
And the History of Health Sciences Program (UCSF)
Dana Simmons
University of California, Riverside
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"Famine Disease": A History of Starvation Science
In this paper I speculate that the two world wars brought a properly colonial style of medicine into the metropole. War forced Europeans to confront mass hunger. The world wars created the conditions and the research subjects for a vastly expanded science of starvation. Doctors observed the symptoms of malnutrition in occupied cities, camps, and asylums. Once the purview of colonial health research, dietary deficiency became an urgent medical issue on the continent. Colonial methods entered Europe at precisely the moment when starvation and bare life - the limit between life and death - touched mass populations. In the process, starvation became a 'disease,' and medical researchers entered into the politics of bare life.
4:00PM
Monday, April 9, 2007
140 Barrows Hall
UC Berkeley
Office for History of Science and Technology, 543 Stephens Hall #2350
University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2350
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