Patterns of medical culture in colonial Bengal, 1835-1880

Bulletin of the History of Medicine

Volumn 80, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 39-72

  Hochmuth, Christian ^a,b,c  

^a DRESDEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Germany)

^b Collaborative Research Centre Institutionality and Historicity ^*  (Germany)

^c Collaborative Research Centre ^*  (Germany)

Author keywords

Accommodation; Authority; Colonial medical education; Colonial medicine; Hybridity; Indigenous medicine; Medical pluralism

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; HEALTH CARE DELIVERY; HISTORY; INDIA; MEDICAL SCHOOL; POLITICAL SYSTEM; SURGERY; TRADITIONAL MEDICINE;

COLONIALISM; DELIVERY OF HEALTH CARE; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; INDIA; MEDICINE, TRADITIONAL; SCHOOLS, MEDICAL; SURGERY;

EID: 33645695821     PISSN: 00075140     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2006.0021     Document Type: Article

References (268)

1. "Medical Education: Bibliographical Record," Indian Annals of Medical Science (here-after IAMS), 1855, 2: 722-23, quotation on p. 723 (emphasis in the original).
2. For an overview of research on colonial medicine, see Biswamoy Pati and Mark Harrison, "Introduction: Health, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India," in Health, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India, ed. Pati and Harrison (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001), pp. 1-36, particularly pp. 2-11;
3. Margaret Jones, "British Colonial Health Policy 1900-1940: Ceylon and the Asian Colonies" (Ph.D. thesis, Bristol University, 2000), pp. 1-20. My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to Jones's work.
4. Poonam Bala, Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective (New Delhi: Sage, 1991);
5. Anil Kumar, Medicine and the Raj: British Medical Policy in India, 1835-1911 (New Delhi: Sage, 1998);
6. Deepak Kumar, Science and the Raj, 1857-1905 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995);
7. Deepak Kumar, "Unequal Contenders, Uneven Ground: Medical Encounters in British India, 1820-1920," in Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge, ed. Andrew Cunningham and Bridie Andrews (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), pp. 172-90.
8. In his later work, Deepak Kumar is somewhat more aware of accommodation processes: "'Colony' under a Microscope: The Medical Works of W. M. Haffkine," Sci. Technol. & Soc., 1999, 4: 239-71.
9. A brief remark on terminology: throughout this essay I use the term "scientific medicine" rather than "Western medicine," which has been used in many studies on colonial medicine to differentiate between indigenous medical concepts and those that were at the bottom of European medical practice. The term "Western medicine" seems anachronistic here because the sources I have used refer to the opposition of scientific medicine versus native medicine.
10. David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993);
11. Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
12. Mark Harrison, "Medicine and Orientalism: Perspectives on Europe's Encounter with Indian Medical Systems," in Pati and Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire (n. 2), pp. 37-87;
13. Harrison, Public Health in British India: Anglo-Indian Preventive Medicine 1859-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
14. Important in this context is also Panikkar's study on the revitalization movement of the last decade of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century: K. N. Panikkar, "Indigenous Medicine and Cultural Hegemony," in Panikkar, Culture, Ideology, Hegemony: Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (New Delhi: Tulika, 1995), pp. 145-75.
15. For an overview of recent historiographic approaches to science and science studies in the context of colonial India, see Dhruv Raina, Images and Contexts: The Historiography of Science and Modernity in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 1-13.
16. This question of agency is also central in postcolonial studies. Agency is here understood as the ability to act or perform an action. For a summary discussion of agency concepts, see Dietmar Rothermund, "Organisierte Handlungskompetenz: Europas Entwicklung und die außereuropäische Welt," in Handeln und Verhandeln: Kolonialismus, transkulturelle Prozesse und Handlungskompetenz, ed. Harald Fischer-Tiné (Münster: Lit, 2002), pp. 1-10.
17. Important contributions from postcolonial scholars include Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); and
18. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak? Speculations on Widow Sacrifice," in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 271-313.
19. Mridula Ramanna, "Indian Response to Western Medicine: Vaccination in the City of Bombay in the Nineteenth Century," in Art and Culture: Endeavours in Interpretation, ed. Ahsan Jan Qaisar and Som Prakash Verma (New Delhi: Abhinav, 1996), pp. 67-78, on p. 67.
20. Bhattacharya shows that the problem of patients' resistance to the collection of lymph was still prevalent in the late nineteenth century: Sanjoy Bhattacharya, "Re-devising Jennerian Vaccines? European Technologies, Indian Innovation and the Control of Smallpox in South Asia, 1850-1950," in Pati and Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire (n. 2), pp. 217-69, on p. 221.
21. James Mills, "Indians into Asylums: Community Use of the Colonial Medical Institution in British India, 1857-1880," in Pati and Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire (n. 2), pp. 165-87, on p. 176.
22. See also Mills, Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism: The "Native-Only" Lunatic Asylums of British India, 1857-1900 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).
23. Sanjiv Kakar, "Medical Developments and Patient Unrest in the Leprosy Asylum, 1860 to 1940," in Pati and Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire (n. 2), pp. 188-216.
24. On leprosy, see also Jane Buckingham, Leprosy in Colonial South India: Medicine and Confinement (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 61-75.
25. Jones, "British Colonial Health Policy" (n. 2).
26. David Arnold and Sumit Sarkar, "In Search of Rational Remedies: Homoeopathy in Nineteenth-Century Bengal," in Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity, 1800-2000, ed. Waltraud Ernst (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 40-57.
27. Waltraud Ernst, "Plural Medicine, Tradition and Modernity: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives: Views from Below and from Above," in Ernst, Plural Medicine (n. 11), pp. 1-18.
28. Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), esp. pp. 3-41.
29. owe an intellectual debt to Raj's most revealing adaptation of Shapin's guiding ideas for the colonial context in his work on William Jones: Kapil Raj, "Refashioning Civilities, Engineering Trust: William Jones, Indian Intermediaries and the Production of Reliable Legal Knowledge in Late Eighteenth-Century Bengal," Stud. Hist., 2001, 17: 175-209.
30. This is in accordance with Ernst's view that a critical pluralist perspective needs to bring power issues into view: Ernst, "Plural Medicine" (n. 12), p. 5.
31. For a similar position, see Marks's call for the consideration of the aspect of power underlying the colonial relationship: Shula Marks, "What Is Colonial about Colonial Medicine? And What Has Happened to Imperialism and Health?" Soc. Hist. Med., 1997, 10: 205-19, on p. 210.
32. Kamat provides revealing examples of indigenous evasive tactics to counter official health regulations: Manjiri Kamat, "'The Palkhi as Plague Carrier': The Pandharpur Fair and the Sanitary Fixation of the Colonial State; British India, 1908-1916," in Pati and Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire (n. 2), pp. 299-316.
33. Homi Bhabha, "The Commitment to Theory," in Bhabha, Location (n. 6), pp. 19-39, on p. 28.
34. In his study on medical texts from an Unani background, Quaiser distinguishes four categories of responses to and critiques of scientific medicine; however, he builds his narrative mainly on examples from the twentieth century: Neshat Quaiser, "Politics, Culture and Colonialism: Unani's Debate with Doctory," in Pati and Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire (n. 2), pp. 317-55.
35. For an overview of colonial medical discourse, see Arnold, Colonizing (n. 5), pp. 43-54;
36. Harrison, "Medicine and Orientalism" (n. 5), pp. 63-78;
37. Kumar, "Unequal Contenders" (n. 3).
38. One classic example is H. H. Wilson, "On the Medical and Surgical Sciences of the Hindus," in The Art of War and Medical and Surgical Sciences of Hindus, ed. Reinhold Rost (1823; New Delhi: Nag, 1979), pp. 23-42, on p. 23.
39. David Kopf designated this essay as the first systematic history of Hindu medicine: David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: The Dynamics of Indian Modernization, 1773-1835 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 174.
40. For a revealing discussion on arguably one of the most important Orientalists, see Raj, "Refashioning Civilities" (n. 13).
41. See, e.g., the Reverend Duffs statements in "Report of the Native Medical Institution Committee, with the Measures Adopted Consequent Thereon," Board's Collections, F/4/1527, 1835-36, vol. 1527, p. 107, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London (hereafter, OIOC).
42. Henry Hurry Goodeve, "A Sketch of the Progress of European Medicine in the East," Quart. J. Calcutta Med. & Phys. Soc., 1837, I: 124-56, quotation on p. 1551/2. Empiricism in this context stands for the opposite of scientifically grounded medicine - that is, a mere practice of trial and error without a proper theoretical background.
43. On the designation as impostors, see James Ranald Martin, Notes on the Medical Topography of Calcutta (Calcutta, 1837), p. 60.
44. For the dangerousness of indigenous practitioners, see C. E. Trevelyan, Education of the People of India (1838),
45. quoted in Jajneswar Ghosh, Higher Education in Bengal under British Rule (Calcutta: Book Company, 1926), p. 108n.
46. Report on the Colleges and Schools for Native Education, under the Superintendence of the General Committee of Public Instruction in Bengal (hereafter GCPI), 1836, p. 56, V/24/946, OIOC.
47. Goodeve, "Sketch" (n. 20), p. 1551/2.
48. Adas claims that the dissemination of scientific knowledge in general was one of the chief rationales for the extension of English education in India: Michael Adas, "Scientific Standards and Colonial Education in British India and French Senegal," in Science, Medicine and Cultural Imperialism, ed. Teresa Meade and Mark Walker (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 4-35, on p. 20.
49. Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 7.
50. Martin, Notes (n. 21), p. 60.
51. Zhaleh Khaleeli, "Harmony or Hegemony? The Rise and Fall of the Native Medical Institution, Calcutta; 1822-35," South Asia Res., 2001, 21: 77-104, on pp. 82-83.
52. For the development of medical education in colonial Bengal, see Kumar, Medicine and the Raj (n. 3), pp. 19-36;
53. Om Prakash Jaggi, "Advent of English Medical Education in India," in Science, Philosophy and Culture: Multidisciplinary Explorations, Part I, ed. B. D. Chattopadhyaya and Ravinder Kumar (New Delhi: PHISPC, 1996), pp. 427-64.
54. On university education in general, see Dagmar Engels, "Modes of Knowledge, Modes of Power: Universities in Nineteenth-Century India," in Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India, ed. Engels and Shula Marks (London: British Academic Press, 1994), pp. 87-109;
55. J. F. Hilliker, "The Creation of a Middle Class as a Goal of Educational Policy in Bengal 1833-1854," in Indian Society and the Beginnings of Modernisation, c. 1830-1850, ed. Cyril Philips and Mary Wainwright (London: University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976), pp. 31-43.
56. For studies on the intellectual milieu of nineteenth-century Bengal, see esp. Tapan Raychaudhuri, "The Pursuit of Reason in Nineteenth-Century Bengal," in Raychaudhuri, Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibilities: Essays on India's Colonial and Post-Colonial Experiences (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 49-65, and
57. Raychaudhuri's classic Europe Reconsidered: Perceptions of the West in Nineteenth-Century Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988).
58. See also Sibnarayan Ray, Bengal Renaissance: The First Phase (Calcutta: Minerva Associates, 2000), pp. 49-67, 90-114.
59. Brahmananda Gupta, "Indigenous Medicine in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Bengal," in Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, ed. Charles Leslie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 368-78, on pp. 368-69;
60. Kenneth MacLeod, "Medical Education in India," Caledonian Med. J., 1908, 7: 174-89, on p. 178.
61. "Report of the Native Medical Institution Committee" (n. 19). For a summary of the report,
62. see Khaleeli, "Harmony" (n. 27), pp. 88-93.
63. See, e.g., Wilson, "Medical and Surgical Sciences" (n. 18).
64. This idea actually derives from the Renaissance tradition of human dissection. See, e.g., Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (London: Routledge, 1995).
65. GCPI, 1836 (n. 22), p. 55.
66. See James Harrison, "The Origin and Progress of the Bengal Medical College," IAMS, 1858, 5: 37-54, on p. 39.
67. For the coverage in the press, see Mel Gorman, "Introduction of Western Science into Colonial India: Role of the Calcutta Medical College," Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., 1988, 132: 276-98, on p. 285.
68. O'Malley remarks that the college had to be closed to prevent the irruption of an angry mob: L. S. S. O'Malley, "The Hindu Social System," in Modern India and the West: A Study of the Interaction of Their Civilizations, ed. O'Malley (London: Oxford University Press, 1941), pp. 354-88, on p. 367.
69. See also Jaggi, "Advent of English Medical Education" (n. 28), pp. 435-36.
70. GCPI, 1836 (n. 22), p. 53.
71. For the social composition of audiences of science in India in general, see Satpal Sangwan, "Science and Its Public in British India: Problematic of Diffusion and Social Appropriation," in Uncharted Terrains: Essays on Science Popularisation in Pre-Independence India, ed. Sangwan, Subodh Mahanti, and Narender Sehgal (New Delhi: Vigyan Prasar, 2000), pp. 13-53.
72. The whole course was designed to take four to six years.
73. GCPI, 1846-47, p. 63, V/24/951, OIOC.
74. GCPI, 1845-46, p. 110, V/24/950, OIOC.
75. GCPI, 1844-45, p. 102, V/24/950, OIOC. This was the first instance of any of the educational institutions of British India being granted recognition from corporate and chartered bodies in England:
76. GCPI, ibid., p. 110.
77. GCPI, Ibid., p. 119.
78. On this exchange, see also Gorman, "Introduction of Western Science" (n. 34).
79. For an account of the discussion about the students' employment after their return from Britain, see Deepak Kumar, "Racial Discrimination and Science in Nineteenth-Century India," Indian Econ. & Soc. Hist. Rev., 1982, 19: 63-82, on pp. 65-66.
80. Harrison, "Origin" (n. 34), pp. 45-47.
81. See also GCPI, 1845-46 (n. 38), pp. 111-12.
82. For an account of the (sometimes problematic) relationship between European scientists in India and their colleagues in Britain, see Satpal Sangwan, "The Strength of a Scientific Culture: Interpreting Disorder in Colonial Science," Indian Econ. & Soc. Hist. Rev., 1997, 34: 217-50.
83. Khaleeli, "Harmony" (n. 27), pp. 101-2;
84. Harrison, "Origin" (n. 34), p. 42.
85. The original class was then called the primary class. On the secondary class, see also Kumar, Medicine and the Raj (n. 3), p. 26.
86. General Consultation, 10 April 1839, GCPI, 1837, p. 101, V/24/946, OIOC.
87. Kumar, Medicine and the Raj (n. 3), p. 75.
88. In a similar vein, but more nuanced than Kumar, see Kakar, "Medical Developments" (n. 9), p. 196.
89. GCPI, 1838-39, p. 48, V/24/946, OIOC.
90. GCPI, 1860-61, p. 176, V/24/963, OIOC.
91. For problems that were caused by the teaching in Hindustani, see GCPI, 1847-48, p. 115, V/24/951, OIOC.
92. GCPI, 1875-76, p. 77, V/24/977, OIOC.
93. GCPI, 1852-53, p. 61, V/24/957, OIOC.
94. GCPI, 1864-65, p. 19, V/24/967, OIOC.
95. GCPI, 1875-76 (n. 49), p. 8.
96. GCPI, 1838-39 (n. 47), p. 42.
97. GCPI, 1859-60, p. 128, V/24/961, OIOC.
98. GCPI, 1857-58, p. 203, V/24/960, OIOC.
99. GCPI, 1855-56, p. 124, V/24/958, OIOC;
100. 1859-60 (n. 54), p. 124.
101. See, e.g., GCPI, 1852-53 (n. 50), p. 61;
102. 1859-60 (n. 54), p. 128.
103. See GCPI, 1836 (n. 22), p. 62;
104. 1840-41/1841-42, p. 93, V/24/948, OIOC.
105. For criticism of the college, see G. A. Bushby to the GCPI, GCPI, 1840-41/1841-42 (n. 58), appendix X, p. Ixxxvi.
106. For a later critique of the examination standards, see Report on the Government Charitable Dispensaries of Bengal for the Year 1870 (hereafter Dispensaries), p. xxiii, V/24/742, OIOC.
107. The low number was a constant matter of concern, starting with a complaint from the GCPI in 1845-46 as quoted in GCPI, 1846-47 (n. 37), p. 64.
108. For the military class, see GCPI, 1849-50, p. 131, V/24/953, OIOC;
109. 1860-61 (n. 48), p. 175.
110. For the Bengali class, see GCPI, 1864-65 (n. 51), p. 500;
111. 1870-71, p. 324, V/24/974, OIOC.
112. GCPI, 1857-58 (n. 55), pp. 64-66;
113. S. Goodeve Chuckerbutty, "A Defence of Native Education in India During the Sepoy Mutinies of 1857-58, 8th July 1858," in Chuckerbutty, Popular Lectures on Subjects of Indian Interest (Calcutta, 1870), pp. 74-91, on p. 82.
114. This line of argument can be found, in, e.g., Kumar, Medicine and the Raj (n. 3), p. 22;
115. Bala, Imperialism and Medicine (n. 3), pp. 41, 48.
116. Arnold, Colonizing (n. 5), pp. 54-55;
117. Arnold, Science, Technology and Medicine (n. 5), pp. 61-62;
118. Khaleeli, "Harmony" (n. 27).
119. Arnold, Colonizing (n. 5), p. 55.
120. The fact that such a plan existed was mentioned in T. A. Wise to H. T. Prinsep, GCPI, 1837 (n. 45), pp. 83-84. Wise complained about the omission of the plan.
121. GCPI, 1836 (n. 22), p. 48.
122. A chair of midwifery and diseases of women and children was established in 1841: GCPI, 1840-41/1841-42 (n. 58), p. 92.
123. Goodeve, "Sketch" (n. 20), p. 1551/2.
124. See, e.g., Arnold, Colonizing (n. 5), pp. 47-50;
125. Harrison, "Medicine and Orientalism" (n. 5), pp. 67-68.
126. GCPI, 1843-44, p. 63, V/24/949, OIOC.
127. GCPI, 1836 (n. 22), p. 58.
128. "Medical Education" (n. 1), p. 723 (emphasis in the original).
129. "Medical Education" (n. 1), p. 723, Ibid.
130. Kumar, Medicine and the Raj (n. 3), p. 73.
131. Jones argues in a similar direction when she states that the implementation of "colonial medicine ... depended on individuals and administrators whose actions were moulded by their circumstances" (Jones, "British Colonial Health Policy" [n. 2], p. 222).
132. Kapil Raj, "Colonial Encounters and the Forging of New Knowledge and National Identities: Great Britain and India, 1760-1850," in Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise, ed. Roy MacLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 119-34, quotation on pp. 120-21.
133. S. Goodeve Chuckerbutty, "Thirty-Sixth Introductory Address to Students of the Calcutta Medical College, Concluding with a Brief Consideration of the Question of National Education for India, June 15th, 1870," in Chuckerbutty, Popular Lectures (n. 61), pp. 169-95, on p. 176.
134. Popular Lectures (n. 61), pp. 169-95, ibid.
135. For an account of the difficulties of entrance into the covenanted service, see also S. Goodeve Chuckerbutty, "Appointment of Natives of India to the Indian Covenanted Services by Competitive Examinations, and the Advantages Offered by a Visit to Europe, Illustrated by a Brief Narrative of Personal Travels," in Chuckerbutty, Popular Lectures (n. 61), pp. 45-73.
136. Harrison shows that only an insignificant number of Indians actually joined the Covenanted Medical Service before the turn of the century: Harrison, Public Health in British India (n. 5), p. 15.
137. GCPI, 1847-48 (n. 48), p. 89.
138. One can find a large number of articles written in support of the subassistant surgeons' case in the Calcutta Journal of Medicine and the Indian Medical Gazette. For articulate criticism of the government policy, see, e.g., "Sub-Assistant Surgeons," Indian Med. Gaz. (hereafter IMG), 1866, 1: 130
139. . For the medical college, see GCPI, 1846-47 (n. 37), p. 66.
140. "Sub-assistant surgeons," Calcutta J. Med. (hereafter CJM), 1868, 1: 11.
141. Kumar, Medicine and the Raj (n. 3), p. 147.
142. For the change of title, see "Sub-Assistant Surgeons," IMG, 1874, 9: 96.
143. Mridula Ramanna, Western Medicine and Public Health in Colonial Bombay, 1845-1895 (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2002), p. 15.
144. W. C. B. Eatwell, "On the Rise and Progress of Rational Medical Education in Bengal," IAMS, 1861, 7: 87-105, on p. 103.
145. Chuckerbutty affirmed that private practitioners could achieve such high incomes: Chuckerbutty, "Introductory Address" (n. 77), p. 177.
146. "Introductory Address", Ibid., p. 176.
147. "Introductory Address", Ibid.
148. Dispensaries, 1880, p. 6, V/24/744, OIOC.
149. I have found remarks about the private practice of subassistant surgeons in most of the dispensary reports I have consulted, starting with the first published dispensary report from 1842. See, e.g., Dispensaries, 1841-42, pp. 121, 290, V/24/732, OIOC;
150. 1870 (n. 59), p. 82.
151. Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), p. 121.
152. GCPI, 1858-59, pp. 212-13, V/24/961, OIOC.
153. For the statement about the military class, see Kumar, Medicine and the Raj (n. 3), p. 26.
154. For a brief biographical sketch of Chuckerbutty, see Kumar, "Unequal Contenders" (n. 3), pp. 175-76.
155. More detailed but distorted in its hagiographic character is P. C. Sen Gupta, "Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty: The First Indian Contributor to Modern Medical Science," Med. Hist., 1970, 14: 183-91.
156. S. Goodeve Chuckerbutty, "On the Present State of the Medical Profession in Bengal," IAMS, 1864, 9: 248-64, on p. 263.
157. Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), p. 129.
158. Eatwell, "Rise and Progress" (n. 84), p. 103.
159. Jaggi claims that a vast majority of them indeed set up private practice, but he fails to offer any convincing source evidence to back his statement: Om Prakash Jaggi, Western Medicine in India: Medical Education and Research (New Delhi: Atma Ram, 1979), p. 44.
160. Arnold and Sarkar assert that many of the failed students turned to private homeopathic practice as an occupation, but as source evidence they offer only one example: Arnold and Sarkar, "Rational Remedies" (n. 11), p. 43.
161. Dispensaries, 1870 (n. 59), p. 81.
162. GCPI, 1865-66, pp. 474-75, V/24/968, OIOC.
163. Kumar's argument that this practice was "gravely injurious to the coolies whose lives were mortgaged to the semi-educated quacks" (Kumar, Medicine and the Raj [n. 3], p. 34) seems highly problematic. Among these cooly doctors may well have been pupils who had taken almost a whole course and were likely to be just as well qualified as those who had finished their degree.
164. S. Goodeve Chuckerbutty, "Address on Retirement from the Presidentship of the Bengal Branch of the British Medical Association: The Average Duration of Human Life in India: The Prophylactic Influence of Vaccination: The Contagious Theory of Cholera," in Chuckerbutty, Popular Lectures (n. 61), pp. 153-68, quotation on p. 156.
165. This statement counters Gupta's claim that "students who studied allopathy had much better chances of achieving a good position in life than those trained" in the traditional system of medical education (Gupta, "Indigenous Medicine" [n. 29], p. 370).
166. General Report on the Lunatic Asylums, Vaccination, and Dispensaries in the Bengal Presidency, 1868, p. 50, V/24/664, OIOC.
167. Dispensaries, 1880 (n. 88), p. 3.
168. For the foregoing paragraph, see Dispensaries, 1865, pp. 3-4, V/24/741, OIOC.
169. Ramanna offers a detailed description of the situation in Bombay Presidency: Ramanna, Western Medicine (n. 83), pp. 48-54.
170. On the issue that private charity was particularly encouraged from the mid-nineteenth century onward in colonial India, see Maneesha Lal, "The Politics of Gender and Medicine in Colonial India: The Countess of Dufferin's Fund, 1885-1888," Bull. Hist. Med., 1994, 68: 29-66, on p. 37.
171. See, e.g., Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), p. 5.
172. Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), p. 5, Ibid.
173. For one example of surgical operations, see Dispensaries, 1867, p. 57, V/24/742, OIOC.
174. Nevertheless, the preparation and use of indigenous remedies was still regarded as a major responsibility: see Dispensaries, 1865 (n. 102), p. 64.
175. Eatwell, "Rise and Progress" (n. 84), p. 103.
176. Dispensaries, 1880 (n. 88), pp. 2-6.
177. General Report, No. 5, on the Lunatic Asylums, Vaccination, and Dispensaries in the Bengal Presidency, 1872, p. 102, V/24/664, OIOC.
178. Dispensaries, 1844-45 (n. 39), p. 6.
179. Dispensaries, 1850-51, pp. 140-41, V/24/739, OIOC.
180. In the case of medical missions, Fitzgerald has shown that scientific medicine became especially renowned when successful treatments were performed upon influential members of the local community: Rosemary Fitzgerald, "'Clinical Christianity': The Emergence of Medical Work as a Missionary Strategy in Colonial India, 1800-1914," in Pati and Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire (n. 2), pp. 88-136, on p. 130.
181. Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), pp. 7-8.
182. Dispensaries, Ibid., p. 157.
183. Dispensaries, 1844-45 (n. 39), pp. 49-50.
184. GCPI, 1865-66 (n. 98), p. 474.
185. Quoted in General Report, 1868 (n. 100), p. 52.
186. One European doctor was especially appreciative of the chemical knowledge of the subassistant surgeons in charge of the dispensary: see Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), pp. 118-19.
187. Dispensaries, 1870 (n. 59), p. 17.
188. For Gupta's argument, see Gupta, "Indigenous Medicine" (n. 29), p. 370.
189. See, e.g., Dispensaries, 1850-51 (n. 110), p. 242.
190. Dispensaries, 1842-43, p. 94, V/24/733, OIOC.
191. See Dispensaries, 1844-45 (n. 39), pp. 49-50.
192. See, e.g., Sreenauth Mokerjee, "Protrusion of Lung from a Wound in the Abdomen," IMG, 1870, 5: 56;
193. Unnoda Churn Kastagree, "Elephantiasis of Scrotum and Penis - Amputation," IMG, 1874, 9: 39-40.
194. Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), pp. 35-36.
195. That Awushtee referred to scientific medical discourse is evident because traditional practitioners in the dispensary reports were always called "hakim" or "kaviraja" and never "medical men."
196. Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), p. 233.
197. For a further example, see Dispensaries, 1867 (n. 105), pp. 54-55.
198. Andrew Cunningham and Bridie Andrews, "Introduction: Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge," in Cunningham and Andrews, Western Medicine (n. 3), pp. 1-23, quotation on p. 10 (emphasis in the original).
199. For a general discussion of the Indian drug industry, see Anil Kumar, "The Indian Drug Industry under the Raj, 1860-1920," in Pati and Harrison, Health, Medicine and Empire (n. 2), pp. 356-85.
200. For 1865, see Dispensaries, 1865 (n. 102), pp. 79-80.
201. For 1880, see Dispensaries, 1880 (n. 88), statistical tables.
202. General Report, 1868 (n. 100), p. 51.
203. Dispensaries, 1870 (n. 59), p. xxiii.
204. For similar findings with respect to missionary medicine, see Fitzgerald, "'Clinical Christianity'" (n. 111), p. 130. Important in this context is also the fact that surgery took central stage in scientific medical practice, while it was only a side issue in traditional medicine - or, as the Orientalist discourse has it, surgery was most sophisticated in the European medical tradition and highly superior to the crude Indian surgical practice. Thus, surgery was an area where scientific medical practice was most different from the traditional one and could therefore distinguish itself.
205. Dispensaries, 1842-43 (n. 120), pp. 98-99.
206. For the first statement, see Dispensaries, 1865 (n. 102), p. 41;
207. 1841-42 (n. 89), p. 131.
208. That there existed prejudices is declared in Dispensaries, 1842-43 (n. 120), pp. 99, 106.
209. For the statement of the indigenous patients' preference for indigenous remedies, see Dispensaries, 1865 (n. 102), p. 54.
210. Dispensaries, 1841-42 (n. 89), p. 132.
211. In a similar vein, albeit in a different colonial context, see Heather Bell, Frontiers of Medicine in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1899-1940 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 218-28.
212. See also Margaret Jones, "The Ceylon Malaria Epidemic of 1934-35: A Case Study in Colonial Medicine," Soc. Hist. Med., 2000, 13: 87-109, on p. 107.
213. Ernst, "Plural Medicine" (n. 12), pp. 8-9.
214. For the classic exposition of the concept of plural medicine, see Charles Leslie, "Introduction," in Leslie, Asian Medical Systems (n. 29), pp. 1-12.
215. See also Helen Lambert, "Plural Traditions? Folk Therapeutics and 'English' Medicine in Rajasthan," in Cunningham and Andrews, Western Medicine (n. 3), pp. 191-211.
216. Jones emphasizes the plural character of medicine in her case study, too: Jones, "British Colonial Health Policy" (n. 2), p. 17-as does
217. Mridula Ramanna, "Indian Practitioners of Western Medicine: Grant Medical College, 1845-1885," Rad. J. Health, 1995, 1: 116-35.
218. For a discussion of the problematic nature of this term, see Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture, and Race (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 5-22.
219. Homi Bhabha, "The Commitment to Theory," in Bhabha, Location (n. 6), p. 28 (emphasis in the original).
220. Young, Colonial Desire (n. 137), pp. 22-23.
221. See, e.g., the use of the term "hybrid" in Kapil Raj, "Christian Confessions and Styles of Science in Nineteenth-Century Bengal: Their Impact on the Emergence of the Social Sciences in Britain," in Les sciences coloniales: Figures et institutions, ed. Patrick Petitjean (Paris: ORSTOM, 1996), pp. 285-97, on p. 292;
222. Raj, "Refashioning Civilities" (n. 13), pp. 204-6;
223. John Hume, "Rival Traditions: Western Medicine and Yunan-i Tibb in the Punjab, 1849-1889," Bull. Hist. Med., 1977, 51: 214-31, on p. 231;
224. Ernst, "Plural medicine" (n. 12), pp. 1-18.
225. Prakash employs the concept of hybridity to describe the interplay of Western science and the imagination of the nation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India: Prakash, Another Reason (n. 25).
226. Lourdusamy is very critical of Prakash's argumentation and draws quite different conclusions in his study on science in colonial India: John Lourdusamy, "Science and National Consciousness: A Study of the Response to Modern Science in Colonial Bengal, c. 1870-1930" (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, 1999).
227. Editorial, CJM, 1868, 1: 4.
228. Editorial, CJM, 1874, 7: 56.
229. For the tumult around Sircar's paper, see "Meeting of the Bengal Branch of the British Medical Association," IMG, 1867, 2: 131-32.
230. Arnold and Sarkar, "Rational Remedies" (n. 11), offer an overview of the state of homeopathy in nineteenth-century Bengal. Sircar is best known as the founder of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science.
231. For a brief account of his life and career, see Arun Kumar Biswas, Gleanings of the Past and the Science Movement, in the Diaries of Drs. Mahendralal and Amritalal Sircar (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 2000), esp. pp. 1-11, 20-40.
232. On his role as a science popularizer, see Lourdusamy, "Science and National Consciousness" (n. 141), pp. 41-98.
233. For Prakash's particular reading of Sircar's use of science, see Prakash, Another Reason (n. 25), pp. 69-71, 84.
234. Chakraborty revises many of Prakash's arguments: Pratik Chakraborty, "Science, Morality, and Nationalism: The Multifaceted Project of Mahendra Lal Sircar," Stud. Hist., 2001, 17: 245-74.
235. See also John Lourdusamy, "The Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science: A Tortuous Tryst with Modern Science," J. Sci. Educ. & Technol., 2003, 12: 381-96.
236. Editorial, CJM, 1868, I: 2-3 (emphasis in the original).
237. For a similar statement, see "The Indian Medical Gazette and Ourselves; or, The Dawning of Better Days," CJM, 1868, 1: 160.
238. Editorial, CJM, 1868, 1: 3.
239. CJM, 1868, 1: 3., Ibid.
240. For the appreciation of Sanskrit writings, see "Charaka," CJM, 1868, 1: 115.
241. The statement on the value of indigenous drugs can be found in "Review: K. L. Dey, The Indigenous Drugs of India; or, Short Descriptive Notices of the Medicines, Both Vegetable, and Mineral, in Common Use Among the Natives of India," CJM, 1868, 1: 25.
242. For the critique of traditional practitioners, see "Colleges of Hakims and Kavirajs!" CJM, 1868, 1: 116-19, on p. 117.
243. "Colleges of Hakims and Kavirajs!" (n. 148), pp. 118-19.
244. "Preliminary Education of Candidates for the Medical Profession," CJM, 1869, 2: 199-206, quotation on p. 200.
245. Arnold and Sarkar, "Rational Remedies" (n. 11), p. 53.
246. Quaiser describes interesting cases of an anticolonial impetus in his study on some Unani authors' opposition to scientific medicine that "incorporated a fight against colonial domination which emerged before mainstream nationalist opposition crystallised" (Quaiser, "Politics, Culture and Colonialism" [n. 16], p. 351).
247. Gopaul Chunder Roy, "Appendix: On the Past and Present State of Medicine in India," in Roy, The Causes, Symptoms and Treatment of Burdwan Fever, or, the Epidemic Fever of Lower Bengal (London, 1876), pp. 125-56, quotation on p. 156.
248. Prakash, Another Reason (n. 25), p. 63.
249. Another Reason, Ibid., pp. 8, 47-48.
250. Another Reason, Ibid., p. 47.
251. In a similar vein, Lourdusamy argues that Sircar's foundation of the IACS "not only subverted but, in a way, inverted the dualism of the enlightened colonizer and the 'native' oblivious to the benefits of modern science" (Lourdusamy, "Indian Association" [n. 144], p. 395).
252. Degumber Mitter, The Epidemic Fever in Bengal (Calcutta, 1873), pp. 30-31.
253. For a background on the discussions about this fever, see Arabinda Samanta, Malarial Fever in Colonial Bengal, 1820-1939: Social History of an Epidemic (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 2002), pp. 114-21.
254. Mitter, Epidemic Fever (n. 157), p. 47.
255. Epidemic Fever, Ibid., p. 61.
256. Bholanoth Bose, Principles of Rational Therapeutics; Commenced as an Enquiry into the Relative Value of Quinine and Arsenic in Ague (London, 1877), p. 60 (emphasis in the original).
257. Bholanoth Bose, A New System of Medicine Entitled Recognizant Medicine, or, the State of the Sick (London, 1877), p. viii.
258. A New System of Medicine Entitled Recognizant Medicine, Or, the State of the Sick, Ibid., p. 155.
259. A New System of Medicine Entitled Recognizant Medicine, Or, the State of the Sick, Ibid., p. 157.
260. A New System of Medicine Entitled Recognizant Medicine, Or, the State of the Sick, Ibid., p. viii.
261. A New System of Medicine Entitled Recognizant Medicine, Or, the State of the Sick, Ibid., p. vi.
262. A New System of Medicine Entitled Recognizant Medicine, Or, the State of the Sick, Ibid., p. 3.
263. A New System of Medicine Entitled Recognizant Medicine, Or, the State of the Sick, Ibid., pp. 6-7.
264. "Review: Bholanoth Bose, A New System of Medicine Entitled Recognizant Medicine or the State of the Sick," IMG, 1878, 13: 82-83;
265. "Review: Bholanoth Bose, Principles of Rational Therapeutics"
266. Principles of Rational Therapeutics, ibid., p. 109.
267. "Review: Bose, New System of Medicine" (n. 168), p. 83.
268. Warwick Anderson, "Where Is the Postcolonial History of Medicine?" Bull. Hist. Med., 1998, 72: 522-30, on p. 526.