1st Edition

The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India

Edited By Biswamoy Pati, Mark Harrison Copyright 2009
    256 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    256 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book analyzes the diverse facets of the social history of health and medicine in colonial India. It explores a unique set of themes that capture the diversities of India, such as public health, medical institutions, mental illness and the politics and economics of colonialism. Based on inter-disciplinary research, the contributions offer valuable insight into topics that have recently received increased scholarly attention, including the use of opiates and the role of advertising in driving medical markets. The contributors, both established and emerging scholars in the field, incorporate sources ranging from palm leaf manuscripts to archival materials.

    This book will be of interest to scholars of history, especially the history of medicine and the history of colonialism and imperialism, sociology, social anthropology, cultural theory, and South Asian Studies, as well as to health workers and NGOs.

    1. Ranald Martin’s Medical Topography [1837]: The Emergence of Public Health in Calcutta Partho Datta  2. The Haj Pilgrimage and Issues of Health Saurabh Mishra  3. Subordinate Negotiations: The Indigenous Staff, Colonial State and Public Health Amna Khalid  4. Plague, Quarantine and Empire: British-Indian Sanitary Strategies in Central Asia, 1897–1907 Sanchari Dutta  5. Medical Research and Control of Disease: Kala-azar in British India Achintya Kumar Dutta  6. The Leprosy Patient and Society: Colonial Orissa, 1870s–1940s Chandi P. Nanda and Biswamoy Pati  7. Medical and Colonial Power: The Case of the Mentally Ill in Nineteenth Century Bengal Waltraud Ernst  8. Prejudices Clung to by the Natives: Ethnicity in the Indian Army and Hospitals for Sepoys, c.1870s–90s Samiksha Sehrawat  9. Racial Pathologies: Morbid Anatomy in British India, 1770–1850 Mark Harrison  10. Pharmacology, Indigenous Knowledge, Nationalism: Few Words from the Epitaph of Subaltern Science Projit B. Mukharji  11. Creating a Medical Consumer: An Analytical Study of Advertisements Madhuri Sharma  12. Opium as a Household Remedy in Nineteenth Century Western India? Amar Farooqui

    Biography

    Biswamoy Pati is Reader in the Department of History at Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University, India. His research interests focus on colonial Indian social history and recent publications include an edited book, The Nature of 1857 (2007), and a book co-edited with Waltraud Ernst entitled India’s Princely States: People, Princes and Colonialism (2007).

    Mark Harrison is Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at Oxford University. His publications include Public Health in British India (1994), Climates and Constitutions (1999) and a co-edited book with Biswamoy Pati, Health, Medicine and Empire (2001).

     

     

    'The book is a must for students of the history of South Asia, and not just its medical history, since it has a lot about colonial rule in practice.' – Michael Mann, H-Soz-u-Kult (May, 2009)