Medical Education “from Below”: Self-medication, Medical Pluralism, and Therapeutic Citizenship in Colonial Vietnam

In the early twentieth century, French doctors posted in Vietnam de scribed—and condemned—in their monthly reports to their superiors acts of refusal by indigenous people to consume medicines given to them. For these doctors, this refusal was an expression of both mistrust and deep ignorance as to the benefits of modern medicine. In the inter war period, however, these same doctors, as well as their Vietnamese colleagues, reported a certain amount of enthusiasm among their patients for some Western (French) pharmaceuticals. They presented this enthusiasm as undeniable proof of success in their mission to civilize, and its growing