Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine in Colonial Egypt by Hibba Abugideiri (review)

A number of histories coalesce in Hibba Abugideiri's masterful text. Writ large, Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine in Colonial Egypt is a history of the emergence of the modern medical profession in Egypt, beginning in the early nineteenth century. Building on the work of her mentor Amira Sonbol and on that of fellow historian Khaled Fahmy, Abugideiri illustrates the linking of medicine with the imperial projects of the Ottoman viceroy Mohammed 'Ali (r. 1805-1848) and the British veiled protectorate in Egypt (1882-1922). The text is also a study in the practices of colonial rule in Egypt, cogently illustrating the means and methods—among them medicine—that foreigners, first Ottomans and then Europeans, used to rule Egypt and to make it economically productive. At the same time, as the title suggests, Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine is an inquiry into the relationship between modern medicine and gendered regimes of power, both under colonial rule and as Egyptians began to shape nationalist resistance to the British. Consequently, the book also illustrates the relationship between medicine and the shaping of elite nationalist agendas. Finally, Abugideiri's work is women's history, a cautionary tale about the toll of modernity on women's traditional practices. The book is part of a series called "Empires and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000," edited by Phillippa Levine and John Marriott; students of empire and of modern Egyptian history will find much to engage them in its pages.

While the text is structured chronologically, Abugideiri organizes her chapters around three themes. The first is the relationship between medicine and the imperial state. Without overindulging in discussions surrounding Mohammed 'Ali's much-debated role in founding the modern Egyptian state, Abugideiri suggests that the viceroy's imperial ambitions were best served through the improved health of his subjects. Here her argument is not new. What is new about Abugideiri's approach is her parallel illustration of Mohammed 'Ali's "tools of empire" with those of the British later in the century. In the book's opening chapter, she illustrates how the state's need for healthy bodies led to the establishment of a state-run medical school in Cairo and hospitals and clinics in the capital, Alexandria, and in the countryside beginning in the 1820s. Abugideiri uses what she calls the viceroy's pragmatic administrative and curricular reforms to set up a framework for the British Anglicization of Qasr al-'Aini's program of study in the final years of the century, the subject of chapters 3 and 4. In both cases, her focus on imperial state uses of and reforms of medical practices and educational curricula allow her to narrate the emergence of the colonial state(s), the ever-increasing emphasis on the health of imperial subjects, and the modern medical personnel who served colonial regimes. Students of empire will appreciate Abugideiri's frequent comparisons of colonial medicine in Egypt to that of India and other parts of the British empire, just as students of Egyptian history will appreciate Abugideiri's comparison of the Ottoman and British colonial regimes.

The second theme is that of gender. Beginning in chapter 2, Abugideiri lays out the results of modern imperial medicine for women, illustrating how Mohammed 'Ali's needs for a healthy army and a productive populace required both male and female medical practitioners and suggesting that the hakimas (doctresses) who emerged from state-run medical schools were the equivalents of male doctors. She illustrates that women, like men, derived status from their expertise. Hakimas were useful to the state both because they facilitated vaccinations and births and because they supervised traditional midwives (dayas). In chapter 5, Abugideiri shows how the later Anglicization of Egypt's medical field replaced the hakima with the nurse-midwife, relegating women to the role of assistants and making them subordinate to male physicians. Her careful portrayal of Anglicization and the subsequent...