Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Re-Constructing’ Indian Medicine: The Role of Caste in Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century India
- 2 The Resurgence of Indigenous Medicine in the Age of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: South Africa Beyond the ‘Miracle’
- 3 Medicine, Medical Knowledge and Healing at the Cape of Good Hope: Khoikhoi, Slaves and Colonists
- 4 Dealing with Disease: Epizootics, Veterinarians and Public Health in Colonial Bengal, 1850–1920
- 5 Mahatma Gandhi under the Plague Spotlight
- 6 Plague Hits the Colonies: India and South Africa at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- 7 The Blind Men and the Elephant: Imperial Medicine, Medieval Historians and the Role of Rats in the Historiography of Plague
- 8 Physicians, Forceps and Childbirth: Technological Intervention in Reproductive Health in Colonial Bengal
- 9 Not Fit for Punishment: Diagnosing Criminal Lunatics in Late Nineteenth-Century British India
- 10 Multiple Voices and Plausible Claims: Historiography and Colonial Lunatic Asylum Archives
- 11 Death and Empire: Legal Medicine in the Colonization of India and Africa
- Notes
- Index
4 - Dealing with Disease: Epizootics, Veterinarians and Public Health in Colonial Bengal, 1850–1920
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Re-Constructing’ Indian Medicine: The Role of Caste in Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century India
- 2 The Resurgence of Indigenous Medicine in the Age of the HIV/AIDS Pandemic: South Africa Beyond the ‘Miracle’
- 3 Medicine, Medical Knowledge and Healing at the Cape of Good Hope: Khoikhoi, Slaves and Colonists
- 4 Dealing with Disease: Epizootics, Veterinarians and Public Health in Colonial Bengal, 1850–1920
- 5 Mahatma Gandhi under the Plague Spotlight
- 6 Plague Hits the Colonies: India and South Africa at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- 7 The Blind Men and the Elephant: Imperial Medicine, Medieval Historians and the Role of Rats in the Historiography of Plague
- 8 Physicians, Forceps and Childbirth: Technological Intervention in Reproductive Health in Colonial Bengal
- 9 Not Fit for Punishment: Diagnosing Criminal Lunatics in Late Nineteenth-Century British India
- 10 Multiple Voices and Plausible Claims: Historiography and Colonial Lunatic Asylum Archives
- 11 Death and Empire: Legal Medicine in the Colonization of India and Africa
- Notes
- Index
Summary
In a district like this in which the majority of the people belong to the Hindoo religion, it is impossible to take the only step which would be efficacious in staying the plague, namely, an unsparing use of the axe on the cattle suspected to be tainted with the disease.
Captain John Gregory, 1869Whenever authorities are able to detect diseased/infected animals, they are sent away to kasai-khanas to be slaughtered by butchers. While there are veterinarians appointed to check diseased meat, it is not possible for them to inspect the numerous animals brought to the slaughterhouses every day, twenty-four hours.
Shree Manicklal Mallik, ‘Niramish Bhojon’ (Vegetarian Diet) (1916)On 3 February 1864, John Stalkartt reported to the government of Bengal that a ‘malignant murrain’ had broken out in Calcutta and the neighbouring area which needed to be checked early. Deeply alarmed at the loss of his own Arab cow and four calves, Stalkratt suggested that
the murrain which attacked the cattle at the Great Agricultural Exhibition is spreading, and some Commission should be appointed to devise means to check it early. Bengal has very few cattle, and should it pass into the villages it will be very serious.
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, widespread outbreak of cattle plague or rinderpest in Bengal, Punjab and Madras, among other regions, caused panic in the colonial establishment.
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- Information
- Medicine and ColonialismHistorical Perspectives in India and South Africa, pp. 61 - 74Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014