The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India

Biswamoy Pati, Mark Harrison, Biswamoy Pati, Mark Harrison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415462310
• eBook ISBN: 9781134042593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Indian & South Asian History
• Index: History

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.

Routledge studies in South Asian history

The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India

Edited by Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison

The Social History of Health and Medicine in Colonial India

Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison

First published 2009

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

© 2009 Editorial selection and matter, Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison; individual chapters the contributors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

has been requested

ISBN10: 0–415–46231–2 (hbk)

ISBN10: 0–203–88698–4 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978–0–415–46231–0 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978–0–203–88698–4 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780203886984

Contents

• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Social history of health and medicine: Colonial India MARK HARRISON AND BISWAMOY PATI
• 2 Ranald Martin’s Medical Topography (1837): The emergence of public health in Calcutta PARTHO DATTA
• 3 Beyond the bounds of time? The Haj pilgrimage from the Indian subcontinent, 1865–1920 SAURABH MISHRA
• 4 ‘Subordinate’ negotiations: Indigenous staff, the colonial state and public health AMNA KHALID
• 5 Plague, quarantine and empire: British–Indian sanitary strategies in Central Asia, 1897–1907 SANCHARI DUTTA
• 6 Medical research and control of disease: Kala-azar in British India ACHINTYA KUMAR DUTTA
• 7 The leprosy patient and society: Colonial Orissa, 1870s–1940s BISWAMOY PATI AND CHANDI P. NANDA
• 8 Institutions, people and power: Lunatic asylums in Bengal, c. 1800–1900 WALTRAUD ERNST
• 9 ‘Prejudices clung to by the natives’: Ethnicity in the Indian army and hospitals for sepoys, c. 1870s–1890s SAMIKSHA SEHRAWAT
• 10 Racial pathologies: Morbid anatomy in British India, 1770–1850 MARK HARRISON
• 11 Pharmacology, ‘indigenous knowledge’, nationalism: A few words from the epitaph of subaltern science PROJIT BIHARI MUKHARJI
• 12 Creating a consumer: Exploring medical advertisements in colonial India MADHURI SHARMA
• 13 Opium as a household remedy in nineteenth-century western India? AMAR FAROOQUI
• Index

Figures

• 4.1 Sketch map of the site of Hardwar fair
• 4.2 Pilgrim route from Chandi to Kashipur
• 5.1 British India, the Levant and Central Asia
• 5.2 Quarantine bases and British sanitary interests in Persia and the Persian Gulf, 1890s
• 12.1 Glaxo Baby-food
• 12.2 Arogyata Kee Devi – Amrit Dhara
• 12.3 Tested for seventeen years, Pustrajvatika (registered)

Tables

• 4.1 Duties of the subordinate police at the Kumbh mela of 1891 at Hardwar
• 4.2 Composition of the sanitary patrols for each administrative section of the pilgrimage site at the Kumbh mela of 1891
• 4.3 Statement showing the pay per mensem for regular police and chaukidars
• 11.1 A catalogue of books dealing with ‘indigenous drugs’ published between 1790 and 1869

Contributors

Partho Datta teaches undergraduate history in Zakir Husain Evening College, Delhi, and is currently Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi.

Achintya Kumar Dutta is Professor of History at the University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India. His publications include Economy and Ecology in a Bengal District: Burdwan 1880–1947 (2002) and he also co-edited History of Medicine in India: The Medical Encounter (2005).

Sanchari Dutta is an historian of medicine and works on modern South Asia. She completed a D.Phil. at the University of Oxford in 2007. Her research focuses on prisons and medicine in colonial India.

Waltraud Ernst is Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Centre for Health, Medicine and Society: Past and Present, at Oxford Brookes University. She has published widely on the history of psychiatry in South Asia and edited Race, Science and Medicine (1999; with B. Harris), Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal (2002) and India’s Princely States: People, Princes and Colonialism (2007; with B. Pati).

Mark Harrison is Professor of the History of Medicine and Director of the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on the history of medicine, disease and imperialism, particularly with respect to India.

Amar Farooqui is Professor of History, University of Delhi, Delhi. His publications include Smuggling as Subversion: Colonialism, Indian Merchants, and the Politics of Opium, 1790–1843 (2005); and Opium City: The Making of Early Victorian Bombay (2006).

Amna Khalid did a D.Phil. at the Universit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Frontmatter 1
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Social history of health and medicine: Colonial India—MARK HARRISON AND BISWAMOY PATI
• 2 Ranald Martin’s Medical Topography (1837): The emergence of public health in Calcutta—PARTHO DATTA
• 3 Beyond the bounds of time? The Haj pilgrimage from the Indian subcontinent, 1865–1920—SAURABH MISHRA
• 4 ‘Subordinate’ negotiations: Indigenous staff, the colonial state and public health—AMNA KHALID
• 5 Plague, quarantine and empire: British–Indian sanitary strategies in Central Asia, 1897–1907—SANCHARI DUTTA
• 6 Medical research and control of disease: Kala-azar in British India—ACHINTYA KUMAR DUTTA
• 7 The leprosy patient and society: Colonial Orissa, 1870s–1940s—BISWAMOY PATI AND CHANDI P. NANDA
• 8 Institutions, people and power: Lunatic asylums in Bengal, c. 1800–1900—WALTRAUD ERNST
• 9 ‘Prejudices clung to by the natives’: Ethnicity in the Indian army and hospitals for sepoys, c. 1870s–1890s—SAMIKSHA SEHRAWAT
• 10 Racial pathologies: Morbid anatomy in British India, 1770–1850—MARK HARRISON
• 11 Pharmacology, ‘indigenous knowledge’, nationalism: A few words from the epitaph of subaltern science—PROJIT BIHARI MUKHARJI
• 12 Creating a consumer: Exploring medical advertisements in colonial India—MADHURI SHARMA
• 13 Opium as a household remedy in nineteenth-century western India?—AMAR FAROOQUI
• Index