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Malarial Subjects: empire, medicine, and nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909

Deb Roy, R. (2017) Malarial Subjects: empire, medicine, and nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909. Science in History. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9781316771617

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To link to this item DOI: 10.1017/9781316771617

Abstract/Summary

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. This title is also available as Open Access.

Item Type:Book
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Humanities > History
ID Code:48952
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Publisher Statement:C Rohan Deb Roy 2017 An online version of this work is published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ 9781316771617 under a Creative Commons Open Access license CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 which permits re-use, distribution and reproduction in any medium for non-commercial purposes providing appropriate credit to the original work is given.

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