Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century IndiaIn this innovative analysis of medicine and disease in colonial India, David Arnold explores the vital role of the state in medical and public health activities, arguing that Western medicine became a critical battleground between the colonized and the colonizers. Focusing on three major epidemic diseases—smallpox, cholera, and plague—Arnold analyzes the impact of medical interventionism. He demonstrates that Western medicine as practiced in India was not simply transferred from West to East, but was also fashioned in response to local needs and Indian conditions. By emphasizing this colonial dimension of medicine, Arnold highlights the centrality of the body to political authority in British India and shows how medicine both influenced and articulated the intrinsic contradictions of colonial rule. |
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Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth ... David Arnold Limited preview - 1993 |
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administration army authority Ayurvedic Bengal Bmb NNR Bmb VR Bngl VR body Bombay Bombay Presidency Brahmin British India British rule British soldiers Calcutta caste cause cholera civil climate colonial India colonial medicine committee cultural Cuningham deaths DFAR Dufferin Fund dysentery early effects enteric fever epidemic epidemic disease Europe European soldiers famine goddess Government of India Hindu Home Pub Home San Ibid India SCAR Indian Medical Indian soldiers indigenous inoculation jails Madras Mahratta malaria Martin medi medical and sanitary Medical College medical officers medicine in India ment military municipal Muslim native nineteenth century nineteenth-century India northern India NWP VR Parsis patients physical physicians pilgrimage pilgrims political population practice practitioners prison public health Pune Punjab religious Report responsibility rumors sanitary commissioner sanitation sickness and mortality Sitala smallpox society surgeons tikadars tion troops tropical vaccination vaidyas variolation venereal disease village Western medicine women doctors ΝΑΙ