Materials and medicine Trade, conquest and therapeutics in the eighteenth century

by Pratik, Chakrabarti

• ISBN13: 9780719083129
• ISBN10: 0719083125
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-10-22
• Publisher: Manchester University Press

Summary

Medicine was transformed in the eighteenth century. Aligning the trajectories of intellectual and material wealth, this book uncovers how medicine acquired a new materialism as well as new materials in the context of global commerce and warfare. Bringing together a wide range of sources, this book argues that the intellectual developments in European medicine were inextricably linked to histories of conquest, colonization and the establishment of colonial institutions. This is the first book to trace the links between colonialism and medicine on such a geographical and conceptual scale. Chakrabarti examines the texts, plants, minerals, colonial hospitals, dispensatories and the works of surgeons, missionaries and travellers to demonstrate that these were shaped by the material constitution of eighteenth century European colonialism. This book will appeal to experts and students in histories of medicine, science, and imperialism as well as south Asian and Caribbean history.

Author Biography

Pratik Chakrabarti is Wellcome Lecturer in the History of Modern Medicine at the University of Kent.

Table of Contents

Glossary	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Lists of Tables and Figures	p. viii
Introduction	p. 1
Trade and treatment: medicine in the colonies in the Age of Commerce	p. 19
War, settlement and medicine in the West Indies	p. 52
Terrains, territories and treatment in the Coromandel	p. 83
Materials and materia medica in India	p. 111
Medical botany in Jamaican plantations	p. 143
Therapeutic trajectories in the age of empire	p. 171
Colonialism and the hinterlands of science	p. 205
Bibliography	p. 222
Index	p. 245
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