Dr Sloan Mahone: List of publications

H.L. Gordon first exercised his philosophical contemplation of the causes of African ‘backwardness’ from his farm in Kenya early in the 1920s. Gordon spent his days as a self-described medical farmer until his posting to Mathari Mental Hospital in Nairobi afforded him the opportunity to provide the Kenya government with the evidence to support his developing theories.1 In 1932, the British Medical Journal published a summary of Gordon’s work with pathologist, F.W. Vint that averred: ‘Dr. Gordon has found that a low degree of mentality is widely prevalent, constituting what in a European community would be a social danger.’2 The author, a colleague of Gordon’s, concluded that should such differences between the European and African mind be shown, efforts to educate the African to the standard of the European could prove to be either futile or disastrous. Kenya Colony provided an ideal environment for the application of medical science, particularly the psychological sciences, to the challenges of governance just as Gordon had hoped. With his help, the types of mental disorders found at Mathari were scrutinized for possible associations with the educability or, more specifically, the natural limits to the education of the African subject.