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. |
Contents
List of Figures and Tables | 23 |
THE ARMY AND THE JAILS | 61 |
TABLES | 66 |
Death rates and hospital admissions among British | 75 |
Sickness in Bengal jails 186392 | 104 |
THE BODY OF THE GODDESS | 116 |
Smallpox mortality and vaccination in British India | 118 |
DISEASE AS DISORDER | 159 |
Cholera mortality in British India quinquennial averages | 164 |
ASSAULT ON THE BODY | 200 |
Plague mortality in Bombay city and India 18961914 | 201 |
HEALTH AND HEGEMONY | 240 |
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Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth ... David Arnold Limited preview - 1993 |
Common terms and phrases
administration appeared army authority Ayurvedic barracks Bengal Bmb NNR Bngl VR body Bombay Bombay Presidency Brahmins British India British rule British soldiers Calcutta caste cause cholera cination civilian climate colonial India committee cultural Cuningham deaths DFAR diet dispensaries doctors dysentery early effects enteric fever epidemic epidemic disease Europe European soldiers Ewart famine goddess Government of India Hindu Home San hospital human Indian Medical Indian soldiers indigenous inoculation jail London Madras Mahratta malaria medi medical and sanitary medical officers medicine in India ment military municipal Muslim native nineteenth century nineteenth-century India northern India patients pean percent physical physicians pilgrimage pilgrims plague measures plague operations political population practice practitioners Press prison public health Pune Punjab religious Report responsibility rumors sanitary commissioner sanitation sickness and mortality Sitala smallpox social society statistical surgeons tikadars tion troops tropical vaccination vaidyas variolation venereal disease village Western medicine women