For a tropical country like ours, nothing can be of greater importance than health and food. Both have been thought about since time immemorial and we did develop a fairly strong knowledge corpus around these two basic human requirements. Several medical anthropologists have looked into the magico-religious rites, rituals and the shamanic practices. Numerous medical texts, both canonical and their commentaries, have been studied in great detail. But only textual studies may not be sufficient. These have to be contextualised historically. Who were the grass-root healers? How did professionalism emerge? What were the contours of medical pluralism? These questions are put to in a sharper focus when modern/western medicine entered new lands riding the colonial wave. Colonialism required bodies to travel from one place to another and this influenced the relations between the bodies and the pathogens. Moreover the colonizing bodies were naturally anxious about their fragility either in the face of larger natural and social environments or in relation to other bodies (indigenous or foreign) that constituted an implicit threat. What were its epidemiological consequences? What were the concerns for public health? One may also ask how much 'public' was public-health? Colonial expansion strengthened the alliance between science and state and the concept of state science/medicine emerged. How did it function; what was its impact? Scholars like David Arnold, Anil Kumar, Mridula Ramanna, Mark Harrison, Biswamoy Pati and many others elaborated upon these on an all-India level. Colonial Bengal has always been exceptional. Here the scholars have dealt with the different public health and medical dimensions with focus on local data, especially sources in Bengali. Kabita Ray, Sujata Mukherjee, Projit Mukharji, Ishita Pande, Arabinda Samanta, Achintya Dutta, Rajsekhar Basu, Shinjini and Rohan Deb Roy and many others have contributed a great deal. Now a number of young scholars are trying to add to our existing knowledge, and may be fill the gaps with more focus. The present volume seems an exercise in this direction. Hope researchers and students interested in this area would find it useful. Personally I have benefitted from the articles included here.
The history of medicine and public health in British India The is gradually emerging as one of the major areas of 'new social history'. Scholars both in India and abroad have been engaged in researches on various aspects of medicine and public health of colonial India for a long time. Globally, since 1960s and 1970s professional historians came up with new ideas and eventually revolutionized the writing of medical history. George Rosen in his 1967 presidential address at the annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine urged the scholars to redefine the 'matter and manners of medical history'. He proposed an agenda for research into the social context of medicine into demography, into the history of emotions, and into responses to disease." In Britain, the flourishing society for the social history of medicine publishes its own journal Social History of Medicine and provides the scholars with an outlet of the historical analysis of medicine and society. In India under Marxist and Social historians in the 1960s and later subaltern studies, championed in 1980s by writers such as Ranajit Guha, history of medicine has gradually started to additionally take into account the 'small voices of History'.
In Indian context, over the few decades, medical historians have investigated the relationship between medical knowledge and colonial power, impact of disease, encounter between western medicine and indigenous society, and developing concept of sanitation, hygiene and public health. Daniel Headrick in his work identified medicine as one of the 'tools' for demonstrating European superiority over the tropical world in terms of political, technical, and military power.
David Arnold argued that the colonial health policies, though expanded to the general population, were mostly designed to suit the colonial 'enclaves' as these were considered medical priorities.
The Eurocentric body of historical literature had portrayed disease as one of the great problems which the Europeans had to overcome in order to secure their domination over the wider planet. By the end of the 19th century, the major campaign in the colonies by the imperial power against sleeping sickness, plague, cholera, yellow fever, malaria etc. give strength to this argument. But the rulers primarily concentrated on how to provide the best hygienic, sanitary, and medical facilities to the military and civil population of their own race. The medical policy was not devised as a part of welfare policy. The health policy primarily aimed at catering to the needs of white civilians and soldiers. It was mainly extended to urban areas to safeguard the Europeans. Even in the mines, plantation, factories and administrative centres, European lives were of primary concern. State intervention came whenever disease turned into epidemics and threatened to cross over from the Indian to the European quarters. The state policy failed to make the transition from state medicine to public health, for the benefit of the people at large.
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