The Rockefeller Foundation and its associated philanthropies have occupied a dominant position in the historiography of Southeast Asian medical history1. Sustained efforts at archival curation have made the Rockefeller Foundation an indispensable point of departure for scholars specializing in the History of Science and Technology Studies. The online search engine of the Rockefeller Archive Center, DIMES (https://dimes.rockarch.org/), lists three recipients from the Netherlands Indies. The Rockefeller Foundation sponsored Mohammad Djamil and Mas Sardjito to undertake further medical training at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA) during the 1920s. At the same time, Soemedi was offered a fellowship to study Public Health at the University of the Philippines (Manila), during the 1930s. Out of these three, Mas Sardjito cuts the most important figure.
The short-lived but successful Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm—between 1909 and 1914—focused on eliminating hookworm in the American South due to its correlation with economic productivity. From 1916 onwards, the Rockefeller Foundation conducted anti-hookworm campaigns globally through the International Health Board (IHB), which ran surveys and designed policy recommendations for colonial governments. The hookworm campaign in Java was part of this program. It was organized by the IHB between 1924 and 1939 and aimed to arouse sanitary consciousness among villagers by placing responsibility for health on villagers rather than on colonial authorities.
In 1915, Mas Sardjito (1890-1970) began his career at the Pasteur Institute in Batavia (now known as Jakarta). After graduating from STOVIA, the medical school for native physicians, he earned the appellation of an Inlandsche Arts, by contrast to Indische Arts, a professional title which was restricted to physicians who had been trained at some university in the Netherlands2. In 1918, at the height of the influenza pandemic, Leiden University awarded Sardjito a grant to work on bacillary dysentery. Eventually, his research in Leiden also investigated tropical diseases endemic to the Netherlands Indies, especially leprosy and yaws.
Subsequently, the International Health Board sponsored his sojourn at Johns Hopkins University to study in public health, in accordance with a scheme for training a limited number of native physicians (figure 1).
Figure 1: Fellowship recorder card for Mas Sardjito

Source: Fellowship recorder card for Mas Sardjito. Rockefeller Foundation records, R.G.10.2.
© Courtesy of Rockefeller Archive Center
He was awarded this Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in December 1922, and arrived in the United States in September 1923. At the end of the first semester, he was “detected cheating” in the sanitary engineering examination. Sardjito subsequently failed the course. The examination committee decided he could not apply for a degree at Hopkins, but allowed him to audit courses for two more semesters. The Rockefeller Foundation sponsored his return trip, with a study stop in Paris. Upon returning to the Netherlands Indies in 1924, Sardjito joined the Dienst der Volksgezondheid (colonial medical service), the beginning of a successful career.
By 1936, Sardjito headed the Leprosy Department at the Central Hospital in Semarang in Central Java (figure 2). The same year, he introduced an innovative method of treating patients at Blora, in the region of Semarang: the process involved tracing infectious cases through home visits, and treatment included chaulmoogra injections, bandaging ulcers of leprosy patients and combating venereal diseases3. Colonial authorities devolved funding connected with leprosy control in Blora to the regency and desa (village) administrations.
Figure 2: The Central Hospital in Semarang, c.1929

Source: Tropen Museum Image No. 60024871, Photographed by Atelier O. Hisgen & Co. NV (Fotostudio), Wereldmuseum, Amsterdam.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COLLECTIE_TROPENMUSEUM_De_Centrale_Burgerlijke_Ziekeninrichting_(CBZ)_in_Semarang_TMnr_60024871.jpg
During the Japanese occupation of the Netherlands Indies—concomitant with the onset of the Pacific War—Sardjito served in the editorial committee of Berita Ketabiban (a medical journal published by Izi Hoko Kai or Association of Indonesian Physicians). In the journal, he highlighted the potential of using traditional Javanese medical remedies (jamu), given the disruption of pharmaceutical supplies during the War4.
After the defeat of Japan in the Pacific War in 1945, Indonesian medical care was limited due to political uncertainty resulting from contending claims to power by both the Indonesian revolutionaries (led by Soekarno) and the Dutch. The revolutionary government translocated from Jakarta to Yogyakarta, in the wake of Dutch military action (1947). At the same time, the Pasteur Institute at Bandung translocated to Klaten, and Sardjito took over the leadership of the institute. Under his leadership, the institute manufactured smallpox vaccine5. By then, Sardjito had already become an influential figure in Indonesian medicine, and he defended the view that science should contribute to nation building.
Sardjito: Science and National Reconstruction
As the architect of modern Indonesia, president Soekarno introduced the notion of pembangunan—a shared nation-building endeavor—that transcended political ideologies. One could argue that Soekarno appropriated the scientific agenda of Indonesian physicians and gave them a definite form through pembangunan. During the Soekarno era of Indonesian history (1945-67), nationalist physicians became influential players in Indonesian science due to their ability to appropriate biological metaphors drawn from medical training and to diagnose Indonesia’s shortcomings in science and prescribe suitable alternatives6.
Sardjito was the first Indonesian physician who defined population health as a critical ingredient in national reconstruction after World War II. On the first anniversary commemorating the proclamation of Indonesian independence (17 August 1946), Sardjito delivered his inaugural lecture as a professor of bacteriology in the new Faculty of Medicine at Surakarta. The lecture highlighted the role of bacteriologists in reconstructing the Indonesian nation7. Sardjito argued that health was not only a state of physical but also psychological well-being. He noted that during the colonial period, due to the poor purchasing power of people in the Netherlands Indies, malnutrition was widespread: this illustrated the weakness of the colonial state, he underlined. As a result, Indonesians were not healthy enough to assume national responsibilities. But this would change. Sardjito followed this same track of using biological metaphors in his public speeches after he founded Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) in 1949, a position he held until 1962 (figure 3).
Figure 3: An undated 1950s photo from Universitas Gadjah Mada. Sardjito, third from left. To his right, President Soekarno.

Source: Khazanah Perpustakaan dan Arsip UGM, Nomor: AF.SARDJITO/AM.MC/1951-3C. With permission from Arsip UGM
On several occasions, he urged medical students to undertake socially relevant research and enhance Indonesia’s respectability in the international research arena. He exhorted bacteriologists to develop Indonesia’s self-sufficiency in vaccine production, particularly against smallpox and cholera, indicating that the nascent nation was capable of “standing on its feet” in public health [in Bahasa Indonesia: berdiri di atas kaki sendiri]. The profusion of natural resources, a skilled population with a strong work ethic, and a glorious past were in Sardjito’s views, the ingredients that would lead Indonesia to national glory8. He sought to raise literacy levels across Indonesia and advocated centralized planning for optimal utilization of the country’s human resources to achieve pembangunan.
Coda
The appropriation of biological metaphors to critique the shortcomings of the colonial state in the Netherlands Indies was a rhetorical strategy used by Sardjito to articulate his vision of science for the newly independent Indonesia. By 1957—with president Soekarno’s proclamation of Guided Democracy—Sardjito backpedaled on aligning his interpretation of science with Soekarno’s notion of pembangunan. In 1955, after Indonesia hosted the Asian African Conference at Bandung that gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement, the USSR attempted to draw Indonesia closer into the Soviet orbit. At the time, Nikita Khrushchev implemented Destalinization. Indonesia was not officially a communist state. Yet, the country’s condemnation of all forms of imperialism at Bandung drew the attention of the Soviets. After Bandung, the Soviets diverted more aid to Indonesia than to any other developing country, except Egypt9. In 1961, Soekarno insisted that UGM would award an honorary doctorate to Ho Chi Minh and Khruschev, which Sardjito refused10. Prijono, the then Minister of Culture resisted Sardjito’s position. To compel Sardjito to resign, Prijono alleged that economists from Wisconsin dominated the Faculty of Economics at UGM. Prijono’s allegations exposed an underlying fear within Indonesia’s political circles that the American orientation of the Faculty of Economics at UGM would upset the delicate equilibrium between maintaining technological self-sufficiency and openness to international aid. Sardjito did not yield to Prijono’s pressure but eventually retired from UGM in 1962 due to old age. The same year, the centrality of medicine to postcolonial Indonesian science was obliterated. Cold War exigencies had made such a version of postcolonial science a chimera.
- Anderson, Warwick, “American Public Health and Colonial Mimicry,” American Literary History 14:4, 2002, p. 686-719; Stein, Eric, “Colonial Theaters of Proof: Representation and Laughter in 1930s Rockefeller Foundation Hygiene Cinema in Java”, Health and History 8:2, . 2006, p.14-44. [↩]
- Neelakantan, Vivek,”Recollecting Jakarta’s Social and Medical History”, Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde / Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 169: 2–3, 2013, p.363-373. [↩]
- Sardjito, M, A Mochtar, Soeparmo Honggopati and Tjitrohoepojo, “De Voortgang van Lepra Fieldwork in het Regentschap Blora” Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch Indie 78:30, 1938, p.1822-30. [↩]
- Orang Indonesia Jang Terkemuka di Djawa [Famous Javanese], Gunseikanbu 2604, [1944], p.348-350. [↩]
- Artha, Arwan Tuti, Menyingkap Pemikiran Prof. Dr. Sardjito, Yogyakarta: Universitas Gadjah Mada, 2006. [↩]
- Pols, Hans, Nurturing Indonesia: Medicine and Decolonisation in the Dutch East Indies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. [↩]
- See Neelakantan, Vivek, “Mobilizing Applied Medical Knowledge for Indonesia: Soekarnoist Science and Asian-African Solidarity, 1950s” In C. Michele Thompson et al., Fighting for Health: Medicine in Cold War Southeast Asia Singapore, NUS Press, 2024. [↩]
- Sardjito, M. , “Bangsa Indonesia Seharusnja Dikemudian Hari Mendjadi Bangsa Jang Besar: Tjeramah Diutjapkan Dimuka Para Mahasiswa Baru Pada Bulan September 1956”, Jogjakarta, UGM Press, 1956. [↩]
- Boden, Ragna, ‘Cold War Economics: Soviet Aid to Indonesia.’ Journal of Cold War Studies 10:3, p. 110-28, 2008. [↩]
- RAC, ‘Interviews: Leland C. Devinney,’ April 20, 1961, Asia Trip Index (March-April 1961), Rockefeller Foundation Records Officers Diaries, Record Group 12; Devinney, Leland C. [↩]
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
vneelakantan (November 15, 2024). Medical Nationalism in the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia: Mas Sardjito and his work. Rockefeller fellows. Retrieved April 26, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12ot2