The Clean Campaigns: Tropical Medicine and The British Army During World War One

Abstract

Kathleen Lynch received her Bachelor of Arts in History (Honors) from the University of Connecticut in May 2013. She concentrated on European history during the twentieth century. She chose this particular topic for her thesis because, as a history and anthropology major with a minor in biology, she was very interested in studying the intersections between empire, medicine, and cultural ideas of health. She found that while historians have extensively studied British use of tropical medicine during the colonial period, as well as medical advancements during WWI, there has not been much research done on the role tropical medicine played on the non-western fronts of the war; in other words, how the colonial dynamic affected military medicine at this time. Her research sought to fill this gap in the existing historiography.