Public Health in British India
Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859–1914

An examination of medicine's role in the consolidation of colonial rule in the Indian Raj.

Mark Harrison (Author)

9780521466882, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 February 1994

348 pages, 21 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.4 x 2.2 cm, 0.49 kg

"[Harrison's] arguments are well made and well supported by an impressive range of sources from contemporary medical journals to memoirs...The result is a solid contribution to the history of health and of imperialism." Histoire sociale

After years of neglect the last decade has witnessed a surge of interest in the medical history of India under colonial rule. This is the first major study of public health in British India. It covers many previously unresearched areas such as European attitudes towards India and its inhabitants, and the way in which these were reflected in medical literature and medical policy; the fate of public health at local level under Indian control; and the effects of quarantine on colonial trade and the pilgrimage to Mecca. The book places medicine within the context of debates about the government of India, and relations between rulers and ruled. In emphasising the active role of the indigenous population, and in its range of material, it differs significantly from most other work conducted in this subject area.

Preface
Introduction
1. The Indian medical service
2. Tropical hygiene: disease theory and prevention in nineteenth-century India
3. The foundations of public health in India: crisis and constraint
4. Cholera theory and sanitary policy
5. Quarantine, pilgrimage, and colonial trade: India 1866–1900
6. Professional visions and political realities, 1896–1914
7. Public health and local self-government
8. The politics of health in Calcutta, 1876–1899
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]