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
OCCIDENTAL THERAPEUTICS AND ORIENTAL BODIES | 11 |
THE ARMY AND THE JAILS | 61 |
THE BODY OF THE GODDESS | 116 |
DISEASE AS DISORDER | 159 |
ASSAULT ON THE BODY | 200 |
HEALTH AND HEGEMONY | 240 |
Other editions - View all
Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth ... David Arnold Limited preview - 1993 |
Common terms and phrases
administration army authority Ayurvedic Bengal Bmb NNR Bmb VR Bngl VR body Bombay Bombay Presidency British India British rule British soldiers Calcutta caste cause cholera civil climate colonial India colonial medicine committee cultural deaths Delhi DFAR Dufferin Fund dysentery early effects enteric fever epidemic Europe European soldiers famine goddess Government of India hegemony Hindu Home Pub Home San Ibid India SCAR Indian Medical Indian soldiers indigenous inoculation jails London Madras Madras Presidency Mahratta malaria Martin medi medical and sanitary 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 Press prison Provinces public health Pune Punjab religious Report responsibility rumors sanitary commissioner sanitation sickness and mortality Sitala smallpox social society surgeons tikadars tion troops tropical vaccination vaidyas variolation venereal disease village Western medicine women doctors