Patient or Test Subject? In Search of Forgotten Voices in the Dutch East Indies
Those who received new medications in the Dutch East Indies were sometimes both patients and test subjects. How did patients themselves experience that role? Ph.D. candidate Caroline Schep has received a travel grant from the KNAW to travel to Sweden in search of new ways to bring to light precisely those barely audible voices from the colonial past.
Around 1900, the pharmaceutical industry boomed. All kinds of new medicines were developed and brought to market. Sometimes this followed thorough testing, but just as often, patients were given a drug whose effects and side effects had barely been studied. 'The current distinction between testing and use only emerged in the second half of the twentieth century,” Schep explains. “Before that, it was much more of a spectrum. For example, pharmaceutical companies would send samples to the Dutch East Indies, asking doctors if they wanted to use them. Many of those doctors did not view this as an experiment, but as a way to provide their patients with the best care.'
In her doctoral research, Schep aims to determine what patients thought of this arrangement. 'Virtually all medical historians struggle with the question of how to make the patient’s voice heard,' she says. 'For me, that’s especially difficult because I’m conducting research in a colonial setting, where some voices are even less audible.'
In recent years, Schep has already examined medical journals, novels, and historical sources linked to places where new medications were widely dispensed, such as the military and plantations. A large collection of newspapers still awaits analysis. She hopes that her stay in Uppsala, Sweden, will contribute to this effort.
All in One Team
'Professor Ylva Söderfeldt is leading a project there on how patients organized themselves in the past to make their wishes heard more clearly,' she explains. 'That ties in nicely with my research, especially since they’re focusing on Northwestern Europe. Many doctors who worked in the Dutch East Indies came from there. I’m curious to what extent they brought their approach to patient care with them to that region and whether that approach changed when patients organized themselves into, for example, an advocacy group.'
In addition, Schep hopes to take a methodological step further. 'Söderfeldt’s team stands out because it includes a data scientist,” she explains. “Whereas in the Netherlands, knowledge is often spread across a large number of people, over there they have everything within a single team. I hope this will help me mine that dataset full of random local newspapers from the Dutch East Indies, because I’ve noticed that quite a bit of specific knowledge is needed to bring to light something as invisible as the patient. At the same time, I can contribute to their research with my knowledge of the colonial context.'
In Sweden, Schep will be part of the Act disease-project.