Medical practice in the colonies very often assumes an aspect of systematized piracy. Injections of twice-distilled water, billed as penicillin or vitamin B-12, chest X-rays, radiotherapy sessions "to stabilize a cancer," given by a doctor who has no radiological equipment, are examples. In the latter case, the doctor need only place the patient behind a sheet and after 15 or 20 minutes announce that the session is over. It even happens that doctors in rural centers (several examples of this in Algeria are known) boast of taking X-rays with the aid of a vacuum cleaner. We may mention the case of a European doctor practicing in Rabelais (in the region of Orléansville) who explains how he manages, on market days, to earn more than 30,000 francs in the course of a morning. "I fill three syringes of unequal size with salt serum and I say to the patient, 'Which injection do you want, the 500, the 1000 or the 1500 franc one?' The patient," so the doctor explains, "almost always chooses the most expensive injection."

Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, loc. 465