Health, medicine, and empire

This collection of essays weaves together several themes related to the social history of health and medicine in colonial India. Its focus ranges from analysing Europe s relationship with India s indigenous medical systems, to case studies of two mental asylums, the location of the leprosy asylum, the technological aspects and social implications of the colonial vaccination policy, and to colonial interventions related specifically to cholera and plague in the pilgrimage centres of Puri and Pandharpur. It also examines indigenous initiatives associated with the Indian drug industry and the Unani medical system and their interactions with the colonial health establishment and modern medicine.