6 - Learning Effects: Lived Experiences, Pharmaceutical Publicity, and the Roots of Selective Demand

Summary

The very existence of a private market for medicines, in all its density, diversity, and creativity, testifies to the popular success of colonial medicines in Vietnam. The three final chapters further probe the roots, vehicles, characteristics, and consequences of Vietnamese pharmaceutical consumption, examining, in particular, the patterns and underlying rationalities of what emerged, over the first decades of the twentieth century, especially during the interwar period, as both a highly selective and persistently plural demand for medicines. The information we have already seen on QE, illicit practices, and commercial strategies indicates that the Vietnamese attraction to colonial medicines was both partial and differentiated.