Medicine and the Saints

This first book from an exciting new figure in the field of Islamic medical history offers a fresh look at how the Moroccan ‘body’ became the site for competing influences leading to a political and scientific modernity. The clear prose, creative use of sources, and historical accuracy are exemplary. Nor will the reader be bored; the narrative is full of twists, turns, and unexpected surprises that engage the mind and stimulate the imagination, regardless of one’s disciplinary orientation. ~Susan Gilson Miller, Professor of History, UC Davis, and author of A History of Modern Morocco, 1830–2000

This book is a significant contribution to the field with much new information and original archival research. It brings together earlier work on colonial medicine in Morocco and gives the reader a new appreciation of the importance of medicine and public health in the colonial encounter and in the nationalist resistance movement, and in the state building that followed. It adds to the study of gender and empire, showing how the colonial authorities manipulated the health and well-being of indigenous women for their political interests. . . . It will be well received by scholars interested in the history of the Maghrib and Middle East, Islamic medicine, Sufism, French Empire, and gender, health, and empire. ~Nancy Gallagher, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

This is a dazzlingly good book. Amster takes us on a bewildering tour of medicine and public health in colonial Morocco in a pioneering study. Health was a critical site of contestation in the protectorate. . . . The differences of authority between doctor and patient were dramatically exacerbated by the gulfs of power in the colonial state. Western biomedical and local Islamic epistemologies produced enormous conflict, and yet opened a critical space of resistance to colonial rule. . . . As opposed to those who would find in colonial medicine a demon of oppression, or those who would use it to excuse colonial excesses, Amster has produced a nuanced study that opens an important window on the enormous complexity of medicine and public health as a staging area for the colonial encounter. Among other critical elements of the book, she places the intersection of gender and religion at the forefront, making this a truly notable addition to the literature. ~Richard Keller, Associate Professor, Department of Medical History and Bioethics, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Medicine and the Saints offers readers a complex analysis and interpretation of French colonialism in Morocco... ~American Historical Review

Medicine and the Saints challenges the very notion of modernity and provides fresh insight into contemporary questions of post-colonial epistemologies of personal and social health. This book is essential for scholars interested in social life at the interstices of colonial-modern Morocco. ~Social History of Medicine