From Colonial Medicines to Global Pharmaceuticals? The Introduction of Sulfa Drugs in French Vietnam

In the decade between 1935 and 1945, the discovery and diffusion of sulfonamides, commonly known as sulfa drugs, new medicines capable of controlling bacterial infections, launched a true therapeutic revolution. Predating antibiotics, these “first miracle drugs” to quote the title of John Lesch's latest book (The First Miracle Drugs. How the Sulfa Drugs Transformed Medicine, OUP, 2007), met with huge successes in both civilian and military applications, thus stimulating a rapid expansion of pharmaceutical research and production, raising expectations of medicine in general and accelerating the appearance of new and powerful medicines created via research. In this paper, I examine the introduction of sulfa drugs in a colonial Southeast Asian setting, French Vietnam. First, I focus on when and how (through what channels) these drugs were introduced in the country, and assess the medical results of their introduction. I then look at the acclaim these products—symbolised by Rhône Poulenc Dagenan®—inspired locally, particularly in the urban settings where they were most accessible. The multiple factors behind this popular success are surely complex. Two which stand out are: first, the long standing collusion between the French pharmaceutical industry, the Pastorian Institute, the colonial government and the public network of hospitals run by its agents within the system of Indigenous Medical Assistance (Assistance Médicale Indigène) and second, the growing familiarisation of Vietnamese people with Western, efficient (and toxic), specific medications, thus promoting a process of therapeutic selection (and indigenisation of medical practises) as well as an enduring appropriation of Western scientific and industrial techniques that would prove crucial during 35 years of war. Examining an important therapeutic innovation at the level of day-to-day practise, this paper intends to participate to a much-needed historicisation of the pharmaceuticalisation of the developing world and of Southeast Asia, a historicisation that will insist on the colonial dimensions of the practise of science, the versatility of the biography of pharmaceuticals and the historical roots of therapeutic choices currently made in Vietnam.

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