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Paper short abstract

While malaria hindered imperialist advancements in Asia, the same disease brought new hope to contain another danger behind the frontline: Neurosyphilis. How did malaria end up as a cure, and how did this groundbreaking experimental research travel from Austria through Japan to colonial Korea?

Paper long abstract

Malaria posed a formidable barrier to imperial expansion across East, South, and Southeast Asia. The discovery of its transmission mechanism earned British tropical physician Ronald Ross the 1902 Nobel Prize. Over two decades later, in 1927, another Nobel Prize in medicine, this time awarded to Viennese psychiatrist Julius von Wagner-Jauregg, highlighted malaria not as a problem, but as a solution. By deliberately infecting patients suffering from paralytic dementia with malaria, he observed remarkable improvements in neurological symptoms. Paralytic dementia, or neurosyphilis, represents the terminal stage of untreated syphilis, characterized by the bacterium’s invasion of the nervous system. As an organic disease manifesting in a mental disorder, the deadly and widespread condition thus became a focal point for unraveling the enigmatic connection between body and mind.

This paper explores the transnational journey of this experimental therapy from Austria to occupied Korea. How did this controversial treatment cross borders and oceans, and what role did Japanese psychiatrists play in its adoption? Within a colonial context, how did the therapy intersect with racial discourses that sought to differentiate and hierarchize populations? By examining this overlooked episode in the circulation of medical knowledge, the paper illuminates how medical discourse served as a tool to legitimize Japanese imperial ambitions and consolidate colonial rule. It reveals the complex interplay between disease, cure, and the mind-body problem in a setting where science and power were deeply entangled.