Health, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India

This collection of essays weaves together several themes related to the social history of health and medicine in colonial India. Its focus ranges from analysing Europe’s relationship with India’s indigenous medical systems, to case studies of two mental asylums (in Madras and Lucknow), the location of the leprosy asylum, the technological aspects and social implications of the colonial vaccination policy, and to colonial interventions related specifically to cholera and plague in the pilgrimage centres of Puri and Pandharpur. It also examines indigenous initiatives associated with the Indian drug industry and the Unani medical system and their interactions with the colonial health establishment and modern medicine. Besides charting out hitherto unexplored areas in the history and historiography of colonial medicine and its articulation with indigenous systems, this book demonstrates the rich possibilities of inter-disciplinary research. Of particular interest to the specialist reader, it is also useful to those working on modern Indian history, cultural studies and sociology.