Recent research has highlighted the importance of knowledge for imperial and colonial projects, the significance of networks in the production of scientific knowledge, and the importance of medicine for colonial history in the modern era.

This paper brings together these major strands of research by focusing on British attempts to identify, understand, and benefit from African indigenous medicines and poisons in Central Africa. In particular, the paper discusses a ‘successful’ case of colonial knowledge-production (the ‘discovery’ of the strophanthus kombe arrow poison plant and the subsequent development of cardiac drug strophanthin) alongside less successful attempts of colonial doctors, officials, and missionaries to study African medicines and poisons.

It is argued that in colonial medical encounters (in which both sides mocked and were curious about each other), African medicines remained more of a secret to Europeans than vice versa, and that key reasons for this can be identified through the careful micro-level study of colonial knowledge-production. The paper emphasises the crucial importance of various mediating ‘middle figures’ (African and European) in colonial and imperial networks, without whom colonial knowledge connected to local medicinal practices and substances could not have developed.

The proposed paper is based on research conducted in Britain and Malawi, and draws upon my previous work as well as a current book project about the cultural history of colonial medicine.