COLONIAL PATHOLOGIES s Azuelo | Bacolor | Bernales

By Warwick Anderson BPA 1-3

ANGIE A. AZUELO
Summary (Chapters 1-2)
Chapter 1 recounts how the army medical department in the U.S. military campaigns
reconciled the emerging germ theory with traditional explanations of pathological causes (i.e.,
ecological and climatic determinism). This attempt at reconciling the new and the old notions was
put to the test as soon as the American incursion to the Philippines began.

Chapter 2 deals with the origins of the colonial public health regime. Anderson recounts
how the regime is indebted to the American military for a number of things, such as organizational
structure, and attitudes toward the new alien environment, as well as the logic and language it
utilized in engaging the pacified regions. With pacification, sanitization commenced: city and
municipal districts were created and surveillance was conducted over Filipino subjects deemed to
be inherent carriers of pathogens. Obviously, military logic was most helpful during times of
epidemic outbreaks when quarantine, night patrols, and stringent control of social lives were
carried out in the name of public health.

Analysis (Chapters 1-2)

 American Colonial Authorities perceived Filipinos as dirty people, dangerous (as they are
vulnerable to disease) and unready for self-government.
 They focused their practice of medicine first on American recruits, but after their miserable
encounters, they set goal on the territory (Philippines) and this is to cover new territory
with a network of disciplinary structures including network of hygiene.
 The climate of the Philippines (both dry and wet season) and the race' of the American
people didn't matches.
 Lots of recruits feel exhausted and get irritated as heat driven them mad. At the same time,
wet season is season of disease, therefore, wet season is also considered as season of death.
 There are plenty of soldiers who died in diseases compare to the number of death in the
actual battle.
 There are lot of good implementations the Americans has brought with regard in hygiene
and sanitation in the Philippines. They put a big impact in Philippines' medical modernity.
 Warwick Anderson was not biased in presenting his ideas in the book, although he is pure
American, though, he wrote Colonial Pathologies with elegance and erudition.
 Overall, Colonial Pathologies provides meticulous and dynamic analysis of how political
rationalities were boned and colonial and colonized subjectivities were formed through the
changing medical perceptions and practices of U.S. imperial policy.
LIANA KATRINA F. BACOLOR
Summary (Chapters 3-5)
Chapters 3 and 4 continue the narrative of the colonial public health regime. As the regime
continued to assert its power in the islands, it had to ward off traditional etiologies, such as the
belief in the degeneration of white people under the tropical sun. To counter fears of tropical
degeneration, the government placed much importance on hygiene. With his move came
laboratory science, the rationale of the comfort zone of the nervous colonial masters, who, with
the ascendancy of the microscope, deployed racial prejudice in scientific medical literature.
Explanations of medically related topics such as immunity and proper hygiene were informed by
racism, which act buttressed the belief that Filipinos were natural reservoirs for microbes.
microbes, in turn, were best detected in native excrement. The construction of toilets and the
organization of institutional carnivals and clean-up weeks were thus given justification. The
obsession with excrement furthered the instruction of hygiene and sanitation as tools of
surveillance; toilets, carnivals, and clean-up weeks likewise served as showcases of American
colonial modernity.

Chapter 5 discusses American fears of tropical neurasthenia. Neurasthenia-or

"Philippinitis" in the Philippines-was initially deemed an ailment caused by white displacement
from temperate regions, compounded by the strains of civilization. Interestingly, with the
emergence of Freudian etiology, it takes a new turn, as a disease connected with sexual indulgence
(the cause of the disease was attributed to both absence and excess in different cases). Anderson
explains that Freudian explanations of nervousness might exonerate the white American male of
his faults as an oppressive colonizer, but the emergence of this etiology only revealed the change
in the contours of white identity regarding the Americans' mission civilisatrice. It is suggested that
by the late 1920s-when Filipinization had already begun-neurasthenia was reported not only
among Americans but also among Filipino elites.

Analysis (Chapters 3-5)

As the narrative in Chapter 3 continued to dig deep towards its rationale (to basically
colonize the natives through nonviolence), the demarcation of the Americans toward Filipinos
began to unfold. In this chapter, the accounts that were drawn by Warwick Anderson – accounts
that discussed the deterioration of some white residents due to contact with the natives, and the
discovery of this fact amidst the struggles with the ‘excruciating’ tropical climate – had justified
its title, “Only Man is Vile.” According to these accounts, it wasn’t the hot climate they should be
fearing, but the ‘unsanitary ways of the local inhabitants’ for it would cause them physical and
mental degeneration. These are the changes colonizers fear whenever they set foot on a foreign
land. There is no doubt, therefore, that the personal experiences and discriminative observations
enumerated by Anderson through several accounts in this chapter (and the entire book) may not
only be triggered by low perception on our natives alone, but also by fear and anxiety of catching
the diseases that were ‘inherently prevalent’ among us.
 Excremental Colonialism, given its title as pretty much the context of the whole Chapter
4, had proved how extensive the influences of the Americanization reached, that even when it
came to the disposal of our wastes (feces), we were intervened. Of course, it was another petty
manifestation of their power; the thought that – for public health officers – human feces were the
most dangerous, one that has a ‘rich store of pathology.’ As they imposed their belief about
Filipinos being ‘natural reservoirs of microbes,’ we, being the ‘indolent and submissive Filipinos’
as we appeared to be in the eyes of the colonizers, eventually carried on with their even tighter
sanitary measures. But had we stayed to our own practices of sanitation, we would have proved
ourselves just fine without these alien interventions; Because in contrast of how those weak,
conceited whites perceived the Filipinos, our ancestors in the pre-colonial period have long
survived with defecating and burying their feces just beneath the ground. To us, this kind of
practice was harmless, but the Americans have always thought otherwise.

This chapter also emphasized the construction and superiority of medical laboratories
during this period, a ‘distinctive and discriminative locus of colonial modernity.’ To my
understanding, these laboratories were the epitome of racial prejudice; segregating the clean (the
Americans, specifically the white physicians who anchored the microscopes) and the dirty (our
natives). An ironic thing it was, too, that the scientific books that were kept in these laboratories
were dominated with foreign publications; British, German, and French, all of which centered
tropical science, but none had spoken for the Filipino natives themselves.

Ultimately, the anxieties of the Americans did not stop with physical degeneration. While
proper hygiene and sanitation now seemed a successful solution in avoiding their physical
degeneration in the Philippines, Chapter 5 now went on to discuss the psychopathic effects of
living in the tropics, specifically tropical neurasthenia (philippinitis). I cannot stress enough how
wretched it was to have upheld their supremacy in an effort to lift their disgraceful ideals of
masculinity and whiteness. This nerve weakness (philippinitis) due to displacement from
temperate regions – being the ultimate white man’s burden during this period – had given the
whites another reason to disfavor our land due to its climes, and another excuse to think poorly of
the Filipino mind due to it being situated in a ‘place where nervous energy is lost, thus reducing
the capacity to do mental activities.’
ALTHEA GRACE U. BERNALES
Summary (Chapters 6-8)
Chapter 6 discusses the Culion Leper Colony as a "laboratory of therapeutics and
citizenship." In a controlled site such as Culion, the state's intrusion into even the most basic tenets
of private life of an inmate, such as childbearing and marriage, was given legitimacy. The chapter
argues that Culion was indeed a showcase of surveillance and discipline justified by the rationale
of public health and laboratory science. Yet it fails to expound on why leprosy was singled out.
One wonders if other diseases could have been used. A distant cousin of leprosy, tuberculosis, was
neglected by the Americans, despite the fact that more Filipinos suffered from it and it entailed a
comparable regimen and behavioral reformation. Filipino complaints of American neglect of TB
control are mentioned in the chapter, but one still wonders whether colonial obsession over
surveillance and behavioral reform was the primary reason behind the infusion of millions of pesos
into the leper colony. One might be able to infer other reasons if the construction and
administration of Culion were discussed in relation to the inadequate and perfunctory campaigns
against TB, particularly, sanatorium treatment during the American period.

Campaigns against intestinal parasites and malaria by the Rockefeller Foundation in the
Philippines are the focus of Chapters 7 and 8, respectively. Campaigns against hookworm involved
picturing Filipinos as hygienically inept compared with their American models. Campaigns against
malaria involved the reintroduction of environmental intervention in lieu of the racialized
measures once implemented by the health bureau.

Analysis (Chapters 6-8)

Chapter 6 mainly talks about the disease called leprosy and how it affected the Filipinos
during the Spanish and American colonization. Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is an
infectious disease that affects the skin, peripheral nerves, mucosal surfaces of upper respiratory
tract and the eyes. Victor G. Heiser, the American colonial had constructed the leper colony named
Cullion, located in Palawan. Cullion became the improbable subjects of intensive medical
reformation and retraining civic responsibility. The American colonials meddled with the basic
tenets of private life of the lepers in Culion. Child bearing, adoption and marriage were given
legitimacy. It also tells a story about the ups and downs of lepers who lived in there tin hope that
somehow their pain and suffering will be alleviated. Meanwhile, Chapter 7 discusses about Culion
which showcased surveillance and discipline justified by the rationale of public health and
laboratory science. Yet some of the diseases such as tuberculosis were neglected by the Americans
despite the fact that it is one of the prevalent diseases that Filipinos had during that time. Chapter
8 focuses on campaigns led against intestinal parasites, hookworms and malaria. Leprosy seemed
more curable because of the complaints neglected by the Americans towards other diseases.

We study history to know what we have lost and what we have gained over the past years.
The American contribution have aided and provided betterment in the Philippine’s public health
regime even in the past. Though we were colonized for a long span of time, the merits of Colonial
Pathologies so far outweigh the shortcomings. Without their help it would probably take a long
time for us to provide medical aide in such diseases aforementioned. Perhaps our state would be
different without their help, we might have lost something in the process but we received
something in return.

Reference
Anderson, Warwick. "Colonial Pathologies". Duke University Press., August 2006.