Dr. Sloan Mahone
Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine
Oxford University
United Kingdom
Abstract
This paper draws generally upon the history of psychiatry in colonial Africa and specifically upon a newly discovered photographic and medical archive from the estate of Dr. Edward Margetts (1920-2004), the psychiatrist in charge of Mathari Mental Hospital in colonial Kenya in the 1950s. A clinician of considerable experience, Margetts was also an accomplished photographer; a section of his archive documents the lives of patients within Mathari Hospital as well as that of Kenyan healers throughout the country. The photographs are meticulously labeled and annotated, many being portraits of individuals whose names, backgrounds, and stories Margetts wrote down. Other photographs are clearly intended to depict symptom groups such as catatonic postures, facial expressions, and the appearance of spasms or tics. In this regard Margetts' use of photography is reminiscent of a genre of psychiatric photography that was evolving since the late nineteenth century and had currency in the mid-20 th century as a diagnostic tool. This paper aims to revisit our understanding of ‘colonial psychiatry' at a dramatic moment at the end of empire when theories of the mind were routinely deployed in the struggle against the anti-colonial Mau Mau rebellion. This research opens up wider depictions of trauma, resilience and therapy allowing for a more nuanced historical comment upon the ‘psychology' of Kenya throughout a period of extreme political and social unrest.