Toxic Histories
Poison and Pollution in Modern India

An analysis of the challenge that India's poison culture posed for colonial rule and toxicology's creation of a public role for science.

David Arnold (Author)

9781107126978, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 February 2016

250 pages, 8 b/w illus.
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.49 kg

'Arnold's explorations of poison, pollution, and toxicity are accessible, informative, and quite illuminating … The book does serve as a helpful road map to future scholarship on poison and environmental pollution not only in India but in the rest of our poisoned world.' Eric Strahorn, Environmental History

Toxic Histories combines social, scientific, medical and environmental history to demonstrate the critical importance of poison and pollution to colonial governance, scientific authority and public anxiety in India between the 1830s and 1950s. Against the background of India's 'poison culture' and periodic 'poison panics', David Arnold considers why many familiar substances came to be regarded under colonialism as dangerous poisons. As well as the criminal uses of poison, Toxic Histories shows how European and Indian scientists were instrumental in creating a distinctive system of forensic toxicology and medical jurisprudence designed for Indian needs and conditions, and how local, as well as universal, poison knowledge could serve constructive scientific and medical purposes. Arnold reflects on how the 'fear of a poisoned world' spilt over into concerns about contamination and pollution, giving ideas of toxicity a wider social and political significance that has continued into India's postcolonial era.

Introduction: poison traces
1. The social life of poisons
2. The imperial pharmakon
3. Panics and scares
4. Toxic evidence
5. Intimate histories
6. Embracing toxicity
7. Polluted places, poisoned lives
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Environmental science, engineering & technology [TQ], Social impact of environmental issues [RNT], Pollution & threats to the environment [RNP], History of science [PDX], History of medicine [MBX], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Asian history [HBJF]