Highlights of the collection Highlights of the collection

The Medical History of British India collection is an important resource in the study of the history of disease and medicine in South Asia. Here are four key subject areas.

Leprosy research in India

Historians have remarked upon the dynamism of leprosy research in colonial India which incorporated Indian medical remedies for leprosy in experiments which applied European scientific and medical developments in to find a treatment for leprosy. These included the therapeutic use of indigenous drugs such as chaulmugra oil and the adaptation of gurjon oil to leprosy treatment. Research by T Farquhar, a retired surgeon-major of the Bengal Medical Service, and Tilbury Fox, linked leprosy with poverty, and emphasised the role of diet in the transmission of leprosy. In fact, leprosy research in India, despite its local origins and the impediments researchers faced, gained international recognition, contributing to the understanding of the disease.

» More about leprosy from this collection.


Protest against plague prevention measures

The intrusive plague prevention measures launched initially in 1896-1897 in Bombay presidency included – the inspection of any ship or intending passenger; detention and segregation of plague suspects; destruction of infected property; searching, disinfecting, evacuating, or even demolition of any dwelling thought to harbour plague; prohibition of fairs and pilgrimages; and the examination and detention of road and rail travellers. The use of British troops to carry out these measures was initiated by officers who believed that ‘native agency’ was not to be trusted for the efficient and thorough execution of these measures. The forcible entry of British troops into Indian homes and the examination of women passengers by male white doctors were perceived as especially insulting by Indians, who protested against these measures.

» More about plague from this collection.


Debates on cholera theories

The reports on cholera from the mid-1860s contained a wealth of meteorological data and mortality statistics which gave new life to theories that linked epidemic cholera with climatic and geographical phenomena. Debates dominated explanations of the nature of cholera and the mode of its transmission in British India. The reports of the 1817-1821 cholera epidemic had used climatic explanations for the disease or had stressed its association with ‘miasma’ – believed to be ‘poisonous emissions’ emanating from rotting vegetation and other kinds of human ‘filth’. Despite the increasing influence of contagionist theories of the spread of cholera in medical circles in Europe, the British medical authorities continued to reject it, seeing instead ‘a fixed relation between cholera and special climatic conditions’. Since this position vindicated the British Indian government’s policy of limited intervention in public health and its opposition to the quarantines imposed against India following the Constantinople Sanitary Conference of 1866, it survived for a long time, despite growing proof for the contagiousness of cholera.

John Murray, inspector-general of hospitals in the North-Western Provinces, conducted a detailed inquiry into the link between Hurdwar pilgrims and the transmission of cholera through north India. Although this evidence seemed to point strongly in a contagionist direction, Murray believed that atmospheric conditions precipitated the initial outbreak of cholera, which then spread contagiously among the pilgrim hosts and those with whom they subsequently came in contact. However, these views were increasingly challenged in India by medical officers. For instance, W R Cornish, the Madras sanitary commissioner, argued that meteorological phenomena, such as the direction of wind currents, had relatively little to do with the transmission of cholera in south India, where observations regarding cholera followed the main lines of human intercourse in line with theories of contagion.

However, it was not until the 1890s that miasmatic theories were finally abandoned when bacteriological investigations led to the widespread acceptance of the transmission of cholera through the comma bacillus, which was transmitted through contaminated water.

» More about cholera from this collection.


Ronald Ross and medical research

Ronald Ross joined the Indian Medical Service (IMS) in 1881. He commenced the study of malaria in 1892, determined to make an experimental investigation of the hypothesis of Laveran and Manson that mosquitoes are connected with the propagation of the disease.

After two-and-a-half years’ failure, Ross succeeded in demonstrating the life-cycle of the parasites of malaria in anopheline mosquitoes. He was awarded the Noble Prize for Medicine in 1902 for this ground-breaking achievement. However, in the mid-19th century the IMS was marked by a reluctance to incorporate new scientific ideas and did not encourage innovation. Until the 1860s-1870s, statistical epidemiology dominated medical research, only a few medical officers had any experience of microscopical research, and bacteriological techniques and experiments were relatively unknown. It wasn’t until the 1880s, when the debates regarding the transmission of cholera began to increasingly hinge on laboratorial research, that efforts were made to improve facilities for medical research in India.

The construction of India’s first medical laboratory was begun in December 1884. By the time of the plague epidemic in the 1890s, it was widely recognised that medical research had an important part to play in preventive medicine.

» More about malaria from this collection.