Book ID: CBB001252484

Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics (2012)

unapi

Chakrabarti, Pratik (Author)


University of Rochester Press


Publication Date: 2012
Physical Details: x + 304 pp.; ill.; bibl.; index
Language: English

During the nineteenth century, European scinetists and physicians considered the tropics the natural home of pathogens. Hot and miasmic, the tropical world was the locus of diesase, for Euopeans the great enemy of civilization. In the late nineteenth century when bacterilological laboratories and institutions were introduced to British Indaia, they were therefore as much an imperial mission to cleanse and civilize a tropical colony as a medical one to eradicate disease. Bacteriology offered a panacea in colonial India, a way by which the multifarious political, social, environmntal, and medical problems and anxieties, intrinsically linkied to its diseases, could have a single reslolution. Bacteriology in British India is th first book to provide a social and cultural history of bacteriology in colonial India, situating it within the confluence of advances in germ theory, Pastuerian vaccines, colonial medicine, laboratoroy science, and British imperialism. It recounts the genesis of bacteriology and laboratory medicine in India through a complex history of conflict and alignment between Pasteurism and British imperial medicine. By investigating an array of laboratory notes, medical literature, and literary sources, the volume links colonial medical research with issues of poverty, race, natioanlism, and imperial attitudes toward tropical climate and wildlife, contributing to a wide field of scholarship like the history of science and medicine, sociology ofscience, and cultural history.

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Reviewed By

Review Dhrub Kumar Singh (2016) Review of "Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics". Bulletin of the Pacific Circle (pp. 21-26). unapi

Review Gradmann, Christoph (2013) Review of "Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 693-695). unapi

Review Mishra, Saurabh (2015) Review of "Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics". Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (pp. 318-320). unapi

Review Stark, James F. (2014) Review of "Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 381-382). unapi

Review Ernst, Waltraud (2014) Review of "Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 649-650). unapi

Review Hobbins, Peter (2014) Review of "Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics". Health and History (pp. 122-124). unapi

Review Lourdusamy, John B. (2014) Review of "Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics". History (pp. 711-713). unapi

Review Mathew, John (2014) Review of "Bacteriology in British India: Laboratory Medicine and the Tropics". Medical History (pp. 456-458). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001252484/

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Authors & Contributors
Li, Shang-Jen
Chakrabarti, Pratik
Neumeyer, Sybille
Arup K. Chatterjee
Jonathan Stafford
D'Abramo, Flavio
Concepts
Great Britain, colonies
Colonialism
Imperialism
Tropical medicine
Medicine
Bacteriology
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
18th century
17th century
Enlightenment
Places
India
Europe
Great Britain
South Africa
China
Australia
Institutions
East India Company (English)
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