Healers on the colonial market Healers on the colonial market is one of the few studies on the Healers on the Dutch East Indies from a postcolonial perspective. It provides an enthralling addition to research on both the history of the Dutch East Indies and the history of colonial medicine. This book will be colonial market of interest to historians, historians of science and medicine, and anthropologists. Native doctors and midwives How successful were the two medical training programmes in the Dutch East Indies established in Jakarta by the colonial government in 1851? One was a medical school for Javanese boys, and the other a school for midwives for Javanese girls, and the graduates were supposed to replace native healers, the dukun. However, the indigenous Native doctors and midwives in the Dutch East Indies population was not prepared to use the services of these doctors and midwives. Native doctors did in fact prove useful as vaccinators and assistant doctors, but the school for midwives was closed in 1875. Even though there were many horror stories of mistakes made during dukun-assisted deliveries, the school was not reopened, and instead a handful of girls received practical training from European physicians. Under the Ethical Policy there was more attention for the welfare of the indigenous population and the need for doctors increased. More native boys received medical training and went to work as general practitioners. Nevertheless, not everybody accepted these native doctors as the colleagues of European physicians. Liesbeth Hesselink (1943) received a PhD in the history of medicine from the University of Amsterdam in 2009. She has had a career in education and in politics. In addition she has published articles on prostitution and the medical history of the Dutch East Indies. Liesbeth Hesselink KITLV_Healers on the colonial market_def.indd 1 10-11-11 11:34 HEALERS ON THE C OLONIAL MARKET VERHANDELINGEN VAN HET KONINKLIJK INSTITUUT VOOR TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE 276 LIESBETH HESSELINK HEALERS ON THE COLONIAL MARKET Native doctors and midwives in the Dutch East Indies KITLV Press Leiden 2011 Published by: KITLV Press Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) P.O. Box 9515 2300 RA Leiden The Netherlands website: www.kitlv.nl e-mail: [email protected] KITLV is an institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) [LOGO KNAW] Cover: Creja ontwerpen ISBN 978 90 6718 382 6 © 2011 Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde KITLV Press applies the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecom- mons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) to selected books, published in or after January 2011. Authors retain ownership of their copyright, but they permit anyone unrestricted use and distribution within the terms of this license. Printed editions manufactured in the Netherlands Contents abbreviations vii preface ix 1 introduction 1 2 the medical market around 1850 9 3 colonial decision-making 53 4 newcomers on the medical market, 75 dokter djawa 1850-1875 5 more newcomers on the medical market, 119 native midwives 1850-1875 6 the stovia, dokter djawa 1875-1915 163 7 pathetic tiny deeds, native midwives 1875-1915 225 8 the medical market around 1915 269 9 conclusion 309 glossary 321 bibliography 323 index of names 365 index of subjects 371 Abbreviations AV Algemeen Verslag (General Report) BKI Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia and Oceania) CBG Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie, The Hague (Central Bureau of Genealogy) CMS Civil Medical Service ENT ear, nose and throat (physician) Exh. Exhibitum (agenda item) GB Gouvernementsbesluit (Governmental decree) GG Gouverneur-Generaal (Governor-General) GTNI Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië (Medical Journal of the Dutch East Indies) Ind. Stb. Staatsblad van Nederlandsch-Indië (Indies Government Gazette) IISG Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam (International Institute of Social History) Kab. Kabinet (cabinet) KB Koninklijk Besluit (Royal Decree) KIT Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, Amsterdam (Royal Tropical Institute) KITLV Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden (Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies) KV Koloniaal Verslag (Colonial Report) MP member of Parliament (of the Lower Chamber) NTvG Nederlandsch Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde (Dutch Medical Journal) OSVIA Opleidingsschool voor Inlandsche Ambtenaren (School for Native Officials) R.M. Raden Mas | Healers on the colonial market Stb. Staatsblad (Government Gazette) STOVIA School tot Opleiding van Inlandsche Artsen (School for Training Native Doctors; later School for Training of Indies Doctors) TBA traditional birth attendant TK Tweede Kamer (the Lower Chamber of the Dutch parliament) TNI Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië (Journal for the Dutch Indies) Vb. Verbaal (minute) VOC Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) Vol. volume viii Preface Some doctoral students take their degree immediately upon completing their study, most never get around to it, and a few wait until retirement to finish it. I belong to the last group. This book is the English translation of my revised thesis. When starting my research, it seemed obvious to me that the topic would have something to do with Indonesia, the country where I grew up. In the orientation phase, I stumbled across, more or less accidentally, two schools that were set up by the Dutch government in 1851 in Jakarta: a medical school for Javanese boys and a midwives’ school for Javanese girls. This is remarkable because back then the Dutch government’s policy was not geared in the least to educating the indig- enous population. Why was an exception made for medical training? My curiosity was aroused: I wanted to uncover the colonial government’s motives for establishing these schools and what drove the indigenous students to apply to them. Who were they, what were their backgrounds, and what sorts of careers did they have after graduating? Did the train- ing fulfill the government’s objective? Did the graduates succeed in obtaining positions in the indigenous society? I was also interested in the differences due to gender between the midwives’ training for girls and the doctors’ training for boys. Working for a doctorate is a lonely adventure, especially when one stands outside the academic world and has retired from working life – as I am. I would like to thank my thesis supervisors, Frances Gouda and Harm Beukers, for their mentoring and, particularly, for their enthu- siasm. The combination of a historian and a medical doctor, who had never met before, worked out well in practice; their respective areas of expertise complemented each other perfectly. 1 Introduction medical historiography Until recently, the field of medical history was a specialization of medi- cine rather than of history. The topics were mostly written by, for and about doctors. Then in the second half of the twentieth century, a shift took place. A new generation of medical historians in the Anglo-Saxon world broke with the traditional orientation to standard medicine and made space for alternative medicine and its practitioners. The focus moved to the societal context of medical care. Henri Sigerist, a Swiss who had moved to the USA, introduced the patient into medical his- tory. He is considered the originator of the new American social history movement (Huisman 1995:144-5). The essay by Susan Reverby and David Rosner from 1979, ‘Beyond the “Great Doctors”’, is held to be the manifesto of this movement (Huisman and Warner 2004:21). For historians, anthropologists and sociologists this development was interesting, but many traditional medical history writers in the Anglo- Saxon world, primarily physicians, were not comfortable with topics that were not purely medical and written by academics who were not doctors. The editorial comment in the Journal of the History of Medicine (January 1980) spoke of a ‘medical history without medicine’ (Reverby and Rosner 2004:174). In the Netherlands, G.A. Lindeboom, the éminence grise of the Dutch history of medicine, feared that the new generation would have too little respect for physicians (Huisman 1995:134). This concern reflected the loss of status of medicine and its practitioners in the 1960s and 1970s. Even in the professional group itself, a new wind was blowing: the British professor of social medicine, Thomas McKeown, questioned the conviction of many of his colleagues that better medical care and medicines had spectacularly extended the average life expectancy and | Healers on the colonial market ascertained that more and better food, hygiene and birth control were far more important.1 That the fear of a ‘takeover’ of medical historiography by non-med- ical historians was unfounded was demonstrated by Olga Amsterdamska and Anja Huizing in an analysis of articles in three medical journals (Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences and Medical History) from the period 1960-2001. It is true that the number of authors with a strictly medical background had declined from 50% in 1960-1961 to only 13% in 2000-2001. The number of historians increased proportionally from 47% to 78%. Amsterdamska and Huizinga based their research solely on the titles of the articles and ascertained that they contained less spectacular shifts than would have been expected given the changed background of the authors. They pre- ferred to talk of diversification rather than a radical change in themes. In addition, it was apparent that primarily prestigious medical journals such as The Lancet cited articles from those three journals and the periodical Social History of Medicine. Evidently, although the authors of medical his- tory were no longer all doctors, their articles were still read by doctors. This suggested to Amsterdamska and Huizing an explanation for the tra- ditional orientation and isolation of the medical history field compared with other sciences (Amsterdamska and Huizing 2004:241-3, 259).