Malarial subjects : empire, medicine and nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909 / Rohan Deb Roy (University of Reading).

  • Deb Roy, Rohan
Date:
2017
  • Books

About this work

Also known as

Empire, medicine and nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909

Description

Malaria was considered one of the most widespread disease-causing entities in the nineteenth century. It was associated with a variety of frailties far beyond fevers, ranging from idiocy to impotence. And yet, it was not a self-contained category. The reconsolidation of malaria as a diagnostic category during this period happened within a wider context in which cinchona plants and their most valuable extract, quinine, were reinforced as objects of natural knowledge and social control. In India, the exigencies and apparatuses of British imperial rule occasioned the close interactions between these histories. In the process, British imperial rule became entangled with a network of nonhumans that included, apart from cinchona plants and the drug quinine, a range of objects described as malarial, as well as mosquitoes. Malarial Subjects explores this history of the co-constitution of a cure and disease, of British colonial rule and nonhumans, and of science, medicine and empire. -- Provided by publisher.

Publication/Creation

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Physical description

xv, 332 pages : black and white illustrations ; 24 cm.

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references (pages 304-323) and index.

Languages

Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    FX.23.AA8-9
    Open shelves

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Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9781107172364
  • 1107172365