Development and death: Reinterpreting malaria, economics and ecology in British India

Indian Economic and Social History Review

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 147-177

  Klein, Ira ^a  

^a AMERICAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 27844591843     PISSN: 00194646     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/001946460103800202     Document Type: Article

References (146)

1. J.A. Sinton, 'What Malaria Costs India', Records of the Malaria Survey of India, Vol. V(3), 1935, pp. 228-30, 259.
2. Ramachandra Guha and J. Martinez-Alier, Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South, London, 1997, pp. 37, 69.
3. Elizabeth Whitcombe, Agrarian Conditions in Northern India, Vol. I, Berkeley, 1972.
4. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body, Berkeley, 1993, pp. 23-28, 241-44, 251-52, 286-88, 294 and passim;
5. Mark Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859-1914, Cambridge, 1994.
6. Sheldon Watts, 'British Development Policies and Malaria in India 1827-c. 1929', Past and Present, No. 165, November, 1999, pp. 141-42, 164-69 and passim.
7. Sir George Macdonald, The Epidemiology and Control of Malaria, Oxford, 1957;
8. R.M. Pinder, Malaria, Bristol, 1973.
9. Leela Visaria and Pravin Visaria, 'Population', in Dharma Kumar, ed. Cambridge Economic History of India (hereafter CEH), Vol. II, Cambridge, 1983, p. 480;
10. Ira Klein, 'Malaria and Mortality in Bengal', Indian Economic and Social History Review (hereafter IESHR), Vol. IX(2), 1972, pp. 132-60.
11. See particularly Charles Bentley, Report on Malaria in Bengal, Calcutta, 1916, pp. 20-38, 50-69 and passim.
12. In addition see Charles Bentley, idem, Report on an Investigation into the Causes of Malaria in Bombay, Bombay, 1911;
13. Charles Bentley, idem, Malaria in Manikganj, Calcutta, 1914;
14. Charles Bentley, idem, The Relationship between Obstructed Rivers and Malaria in Bengal, Calcutta, 1922;
15. Charles Bentley, idem, Some Economic Aspects of Malaria in Bengal, Calcutta, 1923;
16. Charles Bentley, idem, Malaria and Agriculture in Bengal, Calcutta, 1925.
17. See also Charles Bentley and S.R. Christophers, The Causes of Blackwater Fever in the Duars, Simla, 1908.
18. S.R. Christophers, 'Malaria in the Punjab', Scientific Memoirs by Officers of the Medical and Sanitary Department of the Government of India, No. 46, Calcutta, 1911, pp. 108-12 and passim.
19. Pinder, Malaria, pp. 38-39;
20. S.F. Kitchen, 'Falciparum Malaria', in Mark Boyd, ed., Malariology, Vol. II, Philadelphia, 1949, p. 995.
21. Dr J. Elliot, Report on Epidemic Fever at Burdwan, pp. 7-8, India Office Library, London (hereafter IOL).
22. George Blyn, Agricultural Trends in India, Philadelphia, 1966, pp. 253-54.
23. Alan Heston, 'National Income', CEH, Vol. II, pp. 402;
24. Blyn, Agricultural Trends, pp. 251-79, 337.
25. Census of India, 1911, Vol. V: 'Bengal', Part 1, p. 70.
26. Sinton, 'What Malaria Costs India', pp. 232-35.
27. Sinton, What Malaria Costs India Ibid., p. 238.
28. Sinton, What Malaria Costs India Ibid., pp. 231, 249, 263.
29. Nevin Scrimshaw, Carl Taylor and John Gordon, The Interactions of Nutrition and Infection, Geneva, 1968, pp. 63-105.
30. Nevin Scrimshaw, Carl Taylor and John Gordon, The Interactions of Nutrition and Infection, Ibid., p. 121.
31. J. Van Den Brock, R. Eeckels and J. Vuylsteke, 'Influence of Nutritional Status on Child Mortality in Rural Zaire', Lancet, Vol. CCCXLI(8859), June 1993, pp. 1491-95;
32. R.W. Snow, C.S. Molyneux, E.K. Njera, J. Omumbo, C.G. Nevill, E. Muniu and K. Marsh, 'The Effects of Malaria Control on Nutritional Status in Infancy', Acta Tropica, Vol. LXV(1), 30 April 1997, pp. 1-10;
33. P.E. Olumese, O. Sodeinde, O.G. Ademowo and O. Walker, 'Protein Energy Malnutrition and Cerebral Malaria in Nigerian Children', Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, Vol. XLIII(4), August 1997, pp. 217-19;
34. W.D. Man, M. Weber, A. Palmer, G. Schneider, R. Wadda, S. Jaffar, E.K. Mulholland and B.M. Greenwood, 'Nutritional Status of Children Admitted to Hospital with Different Diseases and its Relationship to Outcome in The Gambia, West Africa', Tropical Medicine and International Health, Vol. III(8), August 1998, pp. 678-86;
35. J.K. Kikafunda, A.F. Walker, D. Collett and J.K. Turnwine, 'Risk Factors for Early Childhood Malnutrition in Uganda', Pediatrics, Vol. CII(4), October 1998, p. E45;
36. P. Galan, C. Samba, R. Luzeau and O. Amedee-Mamesme, 'Vitamin Deficiency in Pre-School Age Congolese Children during Malarial Attacks, Part II: Impact of Parasitic Disease on Vitamin A Status', International Journal for Vitamin Nutrition Research, (hereafter IJVNR), Vol. LX(3), 1990, pp. 3, 224-28;
37. J.L. Hautvast, J.J. Tolboom, C.E. West, E.M. Kafwembe, R.W. Sauerwein and W.A. van Staveren, 'Malaria is Associated with Reduced Serum Retinol Levels in Rural Zambian Children', IJVNR, Vol. LXVIII(6), 1998, pp. 6, 384-88;
38. N.M. Anstey, D.L. Granger, N.Y. Hassanali, E.D. Mwaikmbo, P.E. Duffy and J.B. Weinberg, 'Nitric Oxide, Malaria and Anemia', American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Vol. LXI(2), August 1999, pp. 249-52.
39. B.S. Das, D.I. Thurnham and D.B. Das, 'Influence of Malaria on Markers of Iron Status in Children: Implications for Interpreting Iron Status in Malaria-Endemic Communities', British Journal of Nutrition, Vol. LXXVIII(5), November 1997, pp. 751-60.
40. Sinton, 'What Malaria Costs India', p. 249.
41. Malaria parasites growing within a natural habitat, red blood cells, were protected from circulating antibodies. Simultaneously, malnutrition hampered replacement of cell tissue after its destruction by foreign microbes and atrophied centres of production of immunising agents. Moreover, the plasmodium parasite had 'ominous' abilities to develop a high tolerance to antimalarial therapies, or to lie fallow in the liver until therapeutic agents were exhausted, causing 'treatment failure'. See Cedric Mims, The Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease, 3rd edition, London, 1987, p. 163 and passim;
42. Marc Lappe, Evolutionary Medicine, San Francisco, 1994, p. 187.
43. M.J. Murray, N.J. Murray, A.B. Murray and M.B. Murray, 'Refeeding - Malaria and Hyperferraemia', Lancet, Vol. CCCXXIII, March 1975, pp. 653-54;
44. C.J. Bates, H.J. Powers, W.H. Lamb, W. Gelman and E. Webb, 'Effects of Supplementary Vitamins and Iron on Malaria Indices in Rural Gambian Children', Transactions of the Royal Society on Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Vol. LXXXI, 1987, pp. 286-91;
45. Mims, Pathogenesis, pp. 285-86.
46. George Hoffman, 'The Thalassemia and Hemoglobinopathy Syndromes', in Kenneth McClatchey, ed., Clinical Laboratory Medicine, Baltimore, 1994, pp. 912-13.
47. Mims, Pathogenesis, p. 286;
48. L.W. Scheibel and I.W. Sherman, 'Metabolism and Organeller Function during Various Stages of the Life Cycle', in W. Wernsdorfer and I. McGregor, eds, Malaria: Principles and Practices of Malariology, Edinburgh, 1988,
49. as seen in M.E. Shils, J.A. Olson and M. Shike, eds, Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease, 8th edition, Vol. II, Philadelphia, 1994, p. 1250.
50. Ira Klein, 'When the Rains Failed: Famine, Relief and Mortality in British India', IESHR, Vol. XXI(2), 1984, pp. 2, 198.
51. Ira Klein, IESHR, Ibid., pp. 190, 192-96, 199-200, 202-5.
52. Paul Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, Oxford, 1982, pp. 131-32.
53. Paul Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Modern Bengal, Ibid., p. 141.
54. Richard Grove, Green Imperialism, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 381-418, 481-85;
55. Ramachandra Guha, 'Colonialism and Conflict in the Himalayan Forest', in idem, ed., Social Ecology, Delhi, 1994, pp. 275-300;
56. David Hardiman, 'Small-Dam Systems of the Sahyadris', in David Arnold and Ramachandra Guha, eds, Nature, Culture, Imperialism, Delhi, 1995, pp. 206-8;
57. David Gilmartin, 'Models of the Hydraulic Environment: Colonial Irrigation, State Power and Community in the Indus Basin', in Arnold and Guha, Nature, Culture, Imperialism, pp. 210-25.
58. Guha and Martinez-Alier, Varieties of Environmentalism, pp. 158-59.
59. Anthony Wohl, Endangered Lives, Cambridge, MA, 1983, pp. 48-53, 64-73 and passim.
60. Anthony Wohl, Endangered Lives, Ibid., p. 149 and passim;
61. F.B. Smith, The People's Health, New York, 1979, pp. 208-10.
62. Watts, 'British Development Policies', pp. 164-69, 179 and passim.
63. Bentley and Christophers, The Causes of Blackwater Fever, pp. 22-25 and passim.
64. David Arnold, 'Ancient Race Outworn', in Waltraud Ernst and Bernard Harris, eds, Race, Science and Medicine, 1700-1900, pp. 131-35, 137.
65. David Arnold, Race, Science and Medicine, 1700-1900, Ibid., p. 136.
66. Environmentally deleterious development projects assisted the dissemination of Anopheles maculatus, providing innumerable spots where water burbled up, thus facilitating the ubiquitous reproduction of the most volatile, dangerous anopheles north of the Saptura line. Anopheles maculatus also obtained needed sunlight and moderate water temperatures from the 'opening up of . . . jungle and the exposure to sunlight of spring water', and proliferated through Himalayan foothills and beyond. The long string of embankments to protect deltaic Bengal from flooding favoured the diffusion of Anopheles sundaicus. Impeded water flows allowed Anopheles phillippinensis to spread far inland and it became a chief agent in the maelstrom known as 'Jessore fever' and 'Burdwan fever'. In soggy towns with faulty water systems and poor drainage, Anopheles stephensi featured in a malaria horror tale. The 'only oriental vector fully adoptable to urban life', its larvae grew in 'wells, cisterns, roof gutters, fountain basins, garden tanks, tubs, discarded tins', and 'chatties, fire buckets and water jugs'. 'Highly zoophilic' in the countryside, it turned on humans in cities and became 'a dangerous vector', responsible for 'the transmission of malaria in Bombay, Calcutta, Bangalore and a number of other urban centres'. All these anopheles delivered death-dealing loads of Plasmodium falciparum parasites: A.A. Sandosham, Malariology, Singapore, 1959, pp. 140, 147;
67. Sir Gordon Covell, 'Malaria Incidence in the Far East', in Boyd, Malariology, Vol. II, pp. 812-13;
68. Macdonald, Epidemiology and Control, pp. 87, 93.
69. Pinder, Malaria, p. 38;
70. Kitchen,'Falciparum Malaria', p. 995;
71. Sandosham, Malariology, pp. 91-93.
72. Pinder, Malaria, p. 38.
73. Emile Brumpt, 'The Human Parasite of the Genus Plasmodium', in Boyd, Malariology, Vol. I, Philadelphia, 1949, p. 80.
74. Pinder, Malaria, p. 38.
75. Due to 'bloody conflicts' around Monte Casino during World War II, the 'ecology of the region was totally changed': agriculture was abandoned, dikes were broken and anopheles bred 'profusely' in 'bomb holes and throughout the flooded valleys', and 'avidly attacked the human population'. The troops 'left behind various foreign strains of malaria parasites of exceptional virulence', and an epidemic arose of 'indescribable violence'. Elsewhere, modern transport spread malaria intercontinentally, for example when fast mail boats brought a fearsome West African anopheles, Anopheles gambiae, to northeastern Brazil. There it unleashed 'one of the worst malaria epidemics in history' amidst a 'very poor' population, 'prostrating entire towns'. Malaria obtained 'a firm foothold' in nineteenth-century California partly due to 'irrigation . . . farming', and even the worthy Tennessee Valley Authority unloosed malaria among 'fifty percent of the [local] population' when it impounded water in Wheeler Lake, Alabama. See P.C.C. Garnham, Malaria Parasites and their Haemosporidia, Oxford, 1966, p. 361;
76. Leon Warshaw, Malaria: The Biography of a Killer, New York, 1949, pp. 27-31, 141-42, 331-32; and H.L. Dampier, Officiating Commissioner, Nuddea Division, to Undersecretary, Government of Bengal, September 8, 1862, in Report by Dr. Elliot on Fever in the Burdwan and Nuddea Divisions, Statistical and Commercial Letters from India (hereafter SCLI), 1870-71, Vol. CLXXII, IOL.
77. Christophers, 'Malaria in the Punjab', pp. 7-9, 27-83, 105-112.
78. H.L. Dampier to Government of Bengal, September 8, 1862.
79. Memo, from C.C. Adley, Executive Engineer, to J.J. Hume, Officiating Superintendent Engineer, Western Circle, June 25, 1869, SCLI, Vol. CLXXII, IOL.
80. Elliot, Report on Epidemic Fever, pp. 7-8.
81. The Burdwan Fever, Bengal Medical Proceedings (hereafter BMP), 1872, Nos 27-36, December 27, 1871-January 9, 1872, IOL; From R.V. Cockerall, Magistrate, Hooghly, to Commissioner, Burdwan Division, January 29, 1868, SCLI, Vol. CLXXII, IOL.
82. C.T. Metcalfe, Magistrate, Burdwan, to Commissioner, Burdwan Division, June 28, 1872, SCLI, 1872-73, Vol. CLXXIII, IOL.
83. Dr. Elliot, Civil Surgeon, Burdwan, to Deputy Inspector, Hospitals, December 18, 1871, BMP, 1872, IOL.
84. H.L. Harrison, Magistrate, Midnapore, to Commissioner, Burdwan Division, May 9, 1873, BMP, 1874-75, Vol. CLXXIV, No. 116, IOL.
85. Bentley, Report on Malaria, pp. 20-22, 30-31, 34-38.
86. Report on Obstructed Drainage in the Towns and Villages of Bengal, Bengal Municipal Proceedings (hereafter BMPR), 1881, Vol. 1646, IOL; League of Nations, Report of the Malaria Committee on its Study Tour of India, Geneva, 1930, pp. 23-25 and passim;
87. Sir Patrick Hehir, Malaria in India, London, 1927, pp. 44-49 and passim.
88. Bentley and Christophers, The Causes of Blackwater Fever, pp. 22-25;
89. David Denoon, Public Health in Papua New Guinea, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 31-32 and passim;
90. Lenore Manderson, Sickness and the State, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 201-5 and passim;
91. Peter Smith, 'Crisis Mortality in the Nineteenth Century Philippines', Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. XXXVIII, (1), 1978, p. 76 and passim.
92. Bentley, Report on Malaria, 61-62;
93. see also Report by Army Sanitary Commissioner on Bengal, Indian Sanitary Proceedings, 1895, Vol. 4753, pp. 19-20, IOL.
94. Bentley, Report on Malaria, pp. 55-57.
95. Bentley, Malaria and Agriculture, pp. 32, 65-67.
96. Blyn, Agricultural Trends, pp. 255-73.
97. Census of India, 1921, Vol. V: 'Bengal', Part 1, pp. 95-98.
98. Inspector General of Hospitals to Government of Bengal, December 27, 1871, BMP, 1872, Vol. CLXXIII, p. 100, IOL.
99. Ibid. A significant geographic focal point was the region around Jehanabad, notorious for the intensity of its own suffering and as a staging area from which the new malaria made its onslaught into Midnapore. Among key components of the water system were several important streams, the Kana Nudee, the Kana Damodar, and the Koko Nudee, as well as the Byra jhil (lake) and the Jurbari khal. Considerable water collected in the Byra jhil, flowed through the serpentine Jurbari khal, which wound through 'a large tract of country', and passed into the Kana Nudee.
100. H.L. Harrison to Commissioner, Burdwan Division, May 9, 1873.
101. Sandosham, Malariology, p. 196.
102. Macdonald, Epidemiology and Control, p. 93.
103. From J. Whitfield, Executive Engineer, Northern Drainage and Embankments Division, to Magistrate, 24 Parganas, March 31, 1879, Report on the Drainage Beyond the Municipal Limits of the 24 Parganas, BMPR, Vol. 1646, IOL.
104. Sandosham, Malariology, pp. 157-59;
105. Covell, 'Malaria Incidence', pp. 812-13.
106. Covell 'Malaria Incidence', pp. 812-13.
107. From Lord Ulik Browne, August 12, 1879, Improvements of the Health of Towns and Villages by Opening Out Obstructed Drainage, BMPR, 1881, Vol. 1646, IOL.
108. Census of India, 1911, Vol. XIV: 'Punjab', Part 1, p. 65;
109. Census of India, 1921, Vol. XV: 'Punjab', Part 1, pp. 37, 62.
110. For views on malaria's relationship to figures on fever deaths during crisis mortality see Christophers, 'Malaria in the Punjab', p. 24;
111. Sinton, 'What Malaria Costs India', p. 240.
112. Christophers, 'Malaria in the Punjab', p. 25.
113. Christophers, Malaria in the Punjab Ibid., p. 25;
114. Census of India, 1911, Vol. XIV: 'Punjab', Part 1, p. 45.
115. Christophers, 'Malaria in the Punjab', pp. 7-9.
116. Christophers, Malaria in the Punjab Ibid., pp. 105-12.
117. Christophers, Malaria in the Punjab Ibid., pp. 27, 30, 47, 49, 83.
118. D.G. Harris, Irrigation in India, London, 1930, p. 16;
119. P.G. Paustian, Canal Irrigation in the Punjab, New York, 1930, p. 35.
120. Gazetteers of the Northwest Provinces, Vol. III, p. 42, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter LC);
121. District Gazetteers of the United Provinces, Vol. III, pp. 41-42, LC.
122. United Provinces Sanitary Proceedings, January 1913, No. 2, IOL.
123. R.B. Lal and K.S. Shah, 'Malaria and Waterlogging', Malaria Survey, Vol. III(4), pp. 591-96.
124. See also Ira Klein, 'Economic Development, Environmental Decay and Disease in British India', Journal of Indian History, Vol. LXVIII(1-3), 1985, pp. 253-82.
125. Bentley and Christophers, The Causes of Blackwater Fever, pp. 22-25 and passim.
126. Watts, 'British Development Policies', pp. 174, 176, 179.
127. Hehir, Malaria in India, p. 46.
128. S.C. Majumdar, Rivers of the Bengal Delta, Calcutta, 1942, p. 93 and passim.
129. For a more complete analysis of the inter-war transition to lower fertility and escalating population, see Ira Klein, 'Population Growth and Mortality in British India: Part II: The Demographic Revolution', IESHR, Vol. XXVII(1), 1990, pp. 33-63.
130. While successfully treating millions with quinine, IMS physicians, armed after 1900 with the knowledge from Ross's discovery of anopheles transmission, hoped for a grander triumph, to contain the disease by preventing its transmission, destroying anopheles colonies and breeding spots near human habitation. Ross, Sinton and others advocated more active measures, and Ross condemned British government leaders for being as unimaginative as an 'ox' in malaria prevention. Undoubtedly more could have been done in protecting railway camping sites in 'hyper-endemic tracts', in mobilising commercial and industrial interests for malaria control, and particularly in reducing the toll in cities, as illustrated in Bombay, where malaria was greatly diminished before World War I but showed a 'very ominous increase' after control measures lapsed. Sinton and other advocates of anti-malarial activity 'universally admitted', however, that the ravages and economic burden of malaria fell 'most heavily on the rural population'. Malaria eradication could not be attempted in the colonial era, Sinton and others concluded; it was not technically or 'economically feasible for large rural populations'. For malaria eradication in the inter-war era Sinton's pessimism was undoubtedly justified, but the limits of reducing fatalities through reclamation and education were set by IMS finances, which reflected government priorities. The IMS regularly appealed for greater funds to contain diseases which had been conquered in the West, and these requests were as regularly denied by a government which had other, higher priorities. The Second Afghan War (fought to protect the Khyber from Russian penetration) had an outlay (later determined to have been wasted since heavy military equipment could not cross the pass) which was greater than all British educational spending in India. A portion of this war outlay, if spent on health education, might have saved many lives. See Ronald Ross, Memoirs, London, pp. 187, 436-37, 504-5;
131. Ronald Ross, idem, Report on Prevention of Malaria in Mauritius, London, 1909, pp. 117-20;
132. J.A. Sinton, Health Bulletin No. 26, Delhi, 1956 (reproduction of 'What Malaria Costs India'), pp. 75-76.
133. Report of the Charitable Dispensaries under the Bengal Government for 1876, Dispensary and Hospital Reports, Bengal (hereafter BDHR), Vol. V, 1880 (1876-80), p. 10, IOL.
134. H.L. Dampier to Government of Bengal, September 8, 1862.
135. Report of the Public Health Commissioner, 1923, p. 155, LC;
136. Report of the Public Health Commissioner, ibid., 1936, p. 223.
137. BDHR, 1938-40, p. 18; United Provinces Dispensary and Hospital Reports, 1938-40, p. 18, IOL.
138. BDHR, 1920, p. 4.
139. Emilio Pampana, A Textbook of Malaria Eradication, London, 1963, p. 55.
140. Stomatocytic elliptocytosis was indicated by numerous elliptocytes - elliptical red cells exhibiting 'little or no' lysis - and stomatocytes - bowl-shaped cells with a 'slit-like . . . central pallor' in the blood; it was limited to Melanesian locales. Brian Kueck, 'Red Blood Cell Disorders', in McClatchey, Clinical Laboratory Medicine, pp. 892-93;
141. Hoffman, 'Thalassemia and Hemoglobinopathy', pp. 912-13.
142. Catherine Palmer, 'Basic Cytogenetics', in McClatchey, Clinical Laboratory Medicine, p. 604;
143. Hoffman, 'Thalassemia and Hemoglobinopathy', pp. 912-13.
144. Census of India, 1891, Vol. III: Part 1, pp. 53-58, 88-89;
145. Census of India, 1901, Vol. VI: Part 1, pp. 44, 58.
146. Census of India, 1901, Vol. VI: Part 1, p. 56.