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Article ID: CBB901183481

Vernacularizing the Body: Informational Egalitarianism, Hindu Divine Design, and Race in Physiology Schoolbooks, Bengal 1859–1877 (2017)

Mukharji, Projit Bihari (Author)

Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Volume: 91
Issue: 3
Pages: 554-585

URI: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/674945

DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2017.0060

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Human physiology Vernacular literature Science education and teaching Medical education and teaching 19th century South Asia Bengal (India) Malay; Malaysia

Government-aided vernacular schools introduced "human physiology" as a subject in 1859. I use the first couple of schoolbooks and the debate running up to the introduction of the subject to open up the particular and specific histories through which modern anatomo-physiological knowledge was vernacularized in colonial Bengal. In so doing I have two interconnected goals in this article. My first goal is to analyze the precocious decision to teach human physiology to colonial schoolboys, at a time when this was the norm neither in Great Britain nor indeed in traditional Bengali schools. My second goal is to use this case to further develop "vernacularization" as a conceptual tool. In pursuing these twin objectives, I simultaneously hope to move the debate on modern anatomo-physiological knowledge in South Asia away from the level of epistemic superiority and onto-politics to the level of concrete historical particularities.

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