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E-book
Author Jennings, Eric T. (Eric Thomas), 1970-

Title Curing the colonizers : hydrotherapy, climatology, and French colonial spas / Eric T. Jennings
Published Durham : Duke University Press, 2006

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 271 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series e-Duke books scholarly collection.
Contents Acclimatization, climatology, and the possibility of empire -- Colonial hydrotherapy -- Highland hydrotherapy in Guadeloupe -- The spas of RĂ©union Island: antechambers to the tropics -- Leisure and power at the spa of Antsirabe, Madagascar -- Korbous, Tunisia: negating the hammam -- Vichy: taking the waters back home
Summary "Beware! Against the poison that is Africa, there is but one antidote: Vichy." So ran a 1924 advertisement for one of France's main spas. Throughout the French empire, spas featuring water cures, often combined with "climatic" cures, thrived during the nineteenth century and the twentieth. Water cures and high-altitude resorts were widely believed to serve vital therapeutic and even prophylactic functions against tropical disease and the tropics themselves. The Ministry of the Colonies published bulletins accrediting a host of spas thought to be effective against tropical ailments ranging from malaria to yellow fever; specialized guidebooks dispensed advice on the best spas for "colonial ills." Administrators were granted regular furloughs to "take the waters" back home in France. In the colonies, spas assuaged homesickness by creating oases of France abroad. Colonizers frequented spas to maintain their strength, preserve their French identity, and cultivate their difference from the colonized.Combining the histories of empire, leisure, tourism, culture, and medicine, Eric T. Jennings sheds new light on the workings of empire by examining the rationale and practice of French colonial hydrotherapy between 1830 and 1962. He traces colonial acclimatization theory and the development of a "science" of hydrotherapy appropriate to colonial spaces, and he chronicles and compares the histories of spas in several French colonies-Guadeloupe, Madagascar, Tunisia, and RĂ©union-and in France itself. Throughout Curing the Colonizers, Jennings illuminates the relationship between indigenous and French colonial therapeutic knowledge as well as the ultimate failure of the spas to make colonialism physically or morally safe for the French
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-262) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
In English
Print version record
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject Hydrotherapy -- French colonies -- History
Health resorts -- French colonies -- History
Health Resorts -- history
Colonialism
History, 19th Century
History, 20th Century
Hydrotherapy -- history
PSYCHOLOGY -- Psychotherapy -- General.
MEDICAL -- History.
Hydrotherapy -- France -- Colonies -- History.
Health resorts -- France -- Colonies -- History.
Balneologie
Klimatherapie
Heilbad
Kurort
Kolonie
SUBJECT France
Subject Frankreich
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780822388272
0822388278