Although the conventional image of the colonial medical encounter in Africa depicts a white, male, European doctor treating a black African patient, most of the actual deliverers of Western medicine in Africa during the colonial period were non-Europeans. In the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, British doctors formed only a small minority of Western medical practitioners. Most often, it was Syrian, Egyptian and Sudanese doctors, and Sudanese assistant medical officers, mosquito men, nurses, sanitary officers and midwives who delivered sanitary and medical services on behalf of the colonial state. Understanding the cultural exchanges, technology transfer and power relations involved in the operation of colonial medicine clearly requires careful study of the training, the role and the experiences of these non-European practitioners of Western medicine.

In this paper, one such group of medical practitioners is examined through a study of the Midwifery Training School or MTS, opened in Omdurman, Sudan in 1921. The MTS sought to create a class of modern, trained Sudanese midwives, out of, and in rivalry to, an entrenched class of traditional midwives, known as dayas. The analysis relies heavily on the papers of Mabel E. Wolff, founding matron of the MTS and her sister, Gertrude L. Wolff, who first arrived in Sudan to train nurses. Throughout the discussion, the name ‘Wolff’ alone designates Mabel, whose voice dominates their collective papers.