[Writings of the medical observers on the state of the health of Tunisia under the French Protectorate (1881-1956)].

From the military occupation of Tunisia by France in 1881 to that country's independence in 1956, several successive medical observers left behind a wealth of information on the state of health of hte populations composing the Tunisian mosaic. Even thought pre-colonial Tunisia has often been described as a land saddled with disasters and plagues, medical "topographers," most of whom were military doctors accompanying the French expeditionary corps, focused on the fact that few epidemics ever occurred in Tunisia at the time of the Regency. According to some of them, the health situation was better than in Algeria who had been a colony for half a century. The research conducted by the Institut Pasteur in Tunis and medical dissertations by hospital interns in the Regency's capital provide a second source of information comprising invaluable information about endemic infectious diseases. In the inter-war period, the social hygiene movement concentrated upon fighting tuberculosis and protecting infant and maternal health, shifting medical focus to social or "ordinary" diseases and their treatment. Prior to Tunisian independence, a third wave of studies conducted by the new university's socio-medical research group reinforced the connection between lifestyle and health.