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Article ID: CBB592222075

Cat and Mouse: Animal Technologies, Trans-imperial Networks and Public Health from Below, British India, c. 1907–1918 (2018)

Mukharji, Projit Bihari (Author)

Social History of Medicine
Volume: 31
Issue: 3
Pages: 510-532

URI: https://academic.oup.com/shm/article/31/3/510/3897316

DOI: 10.1093/shm/hkx024

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Animal Technology Plague Public health Dogs; cats 20th century, early British India (British Raj) Kitasato, Shibasaburo Koch, Robert Buchanan, Andrew

In 1907, Lt.-Col. Andrew Buchanan, IMS, began to argue for the keeping of cats as the most effective form of public health to combat the annual outbreaks of plague. From then until about 1913 he vigorously promoted the scheme. He soon won some powerful international supporters such as Robert Koch and Shibasaburo Kitasato. Through their support, between 1908 and 1918, a number of countries both within and outside the British Empire adopted cats as tools of public health. Many within the Empire, however, remained opposed to the use of cats. Buchanan’s cats, I argue, were a special form of ‘animal technology’. Use of animals as technologies has been almost entirely neglected in the historiography on public health. Furthermore Buchanan’s scheme, I contend, constituted a rare, alternative vision of public health that challenged dominant forms of imperial public health by proposing a form of ‘public health from below’.

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