“An Ecological Experiment on the Grand Scale”: Creating an Experimental Field in Bwamba, Uganda, 1942–1950 (2020)
Cummiskey, Julia Ross (Author)
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 111
Issue: 1
Pages: 3-21
In the 1940s, the medical entomologist Alexander J. Haddow and his expatriate and indigenous collaborators conducted intensive field studies of the relationships between mosquitos, monkeys, humans, and the yellow fever virus in Bwamba District, Uganda. In order to disentangle the complexities of these relationships, colonial scientists found it necessary to transform natural places into experimental spaces by importing non-native species, manufacturing novel structures, and manipulating the behavior of human residents. This work transformed Bwamba into a particular kind of place, a place constructed to represent nature and natural relationships to the trained and expert eye. In turn, Bwamba shaped the researchers’ increasingly complex understanding of the natural cycles of yellow fever infection. Haddow’s practices reveal the tension between the imperative to understand yellow fever holistically and the imperative to produce experimental results with laboratory-like precision and “placelessness” in mid-twentieth-century medical field research.
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