In partnership with the AGAMIS association (Association pour gérer l'architecture et le musée des îles du Salut), the BU invites you to see the exhibition "Le corps du bagnard : hygiène et santé au bagne" ("The convict's body: hygiene and health in the penal colony"), which will be held in its premises from 15 November to 8 December 2023.
C his exhibition, comprising 13 panels, has been designed to coincide with the re-publication in 2020 by Nada of Dr Louis Rousseau's book entitled Punished men: a doctor in prison. Using a wealth of iconography and testimonies from those involved in the history of the prison system, the exhibition presents the daily lives and health conditions of those deported and transported to French Guiana. Bodies deprived of liberty are dealt with under the following themes: the "formatted body", the "battered body", the "locked body", the "abused body", the "dead body" and the "suffering body". Medical staff, both doctors and nurses, obviously play an essential role in the health care of prisoners, as the panels devoted to the major role of carers remind us. Three panels are dedicated to them: "Training for carers", "Doctors know how to do everything" and "Nurses". The first deals with the content of their training (which will be of particular interest to our IFSI and PACES students) and the second describes their scientific knowledge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Two personalities in particular will catch the visitor's attention: doctors Léon Collin and Louis Rousseau, who played a fundamental role in organising the medical care of convicts, both from a clinical and administrative point of view, as can be seen on the panels "The eye of the witness" and "The pen and the scalpel". In fact, these doctors were both administrators of the prison and, as such, recorded in great detail every detail of the convicts' daily lives. Their writings and photographs are of exceptional documentary value, and will be of great interest to our history students, as well as those studying medicine, IFSI and PACES. This exhibition is also open to the curious!
Come one, come all!