Medicine and Colonialism

Focusing on India and South Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the essays in this collection address power and enforced modernity as applied to medicine. Clashes between traditional methods of healing and the practices brought in by colonizers are explored across both territories.

Poonam Bala

Introduction, Poonam Bala; Chapter 1 'Re-Constructing' Indian Medicine: The Role of Caste in Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century India, Poonam Bala; Chapter 2 The Resurgence of Indigenous Medicine in the Age of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: South Africa Beyond the 'Miracle', Steve Phatlane; Chapter 3 Medicine, Medical Knowledge and Healing at the Cape of Good Hope: Khoikhoi, Slaves and Colonists, Russel Viljoen; Chapter 4 Dealing with Disease: Epizootics, Veterinarians and Public Health in Colonial Bengal, 1850-1920, Samiparna Samanta; Chapter 5 Mahatma Gandhi Under the Plague Spotlight, Howard Phillips; Chapter 6 Plague Hits the Colonies: India and South Africa at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Natasha Sarkar; Chapter 7 The Blind Men and the Elephant: Imperial Medicine, Medieval Historians and the Role of Rates in the Historiography of Plague, Katherine Royer; Chapter 8 Physicians, Forceps and Childbirth: Technological Intervention in Reproductive Health in Colonial Bengal, Arabinda Samanta; Chapter 9 Not Fit for Punishment: Diagnosing Criminal Lunatics in Late Nineteenth-Century British India, Jonathan Saha; Chapter 10 Multiple Voices and Plausible Claims: Historiography and Colonial Lunatic Asylum Archives, Sally Swartz; Chapter 11 Death and Empire: Legal Medicine in the Colonization of India and Africa, Jeffrey M. Jentzen;