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The conquest of Tonkin and Annam lasted from March 1882 to December 31, 1896. The three French military health services, the Navy, the Army, and the Colonies starting in 1891, participated in the medical service of the Expeditionary Corps. The first services worked together ; they alternated command of the Directorate of Health Service in Tonkin depending on political events in France. The colonial health service took over in 1891. Military doctors faced a terrible tropical disease against which their clinical knowledge and treatments were utterly inadequate. However, the generalized use of antiseptics, the first bacteriological discoveries after 1890, and the improvement in living conditions for the troops, contributed to lowering mortality rates slightly by the end of the period. Serious difficulties with obtaining medical supplies so far from the Metropole, the repatriation of patients on hospital transport, the organization and functioning of health services on land in Tonkin and at sea in Formosa were examined. The almost permanent absence of medicines and ambulance equipment and the constant lack of funding were the two main handicaps for Tonkin’s health department between 1883 and 1896.