1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910765789003321

Autore

Deb Roy Rohan

Titolo

Malarial subjects : empire, medicine and nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909 / / Rohan Deb Roy

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, United Kingdom : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2017

©2017

ISBN

1-316-78035-X

1-316-78196-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xv, 332 pages) : illustrations; digital file(s)

Collana

Science in history

Disciplina

Classification

Soggetti

Malaria - India - History - 19th century

Malaria - India - History - 20th century

Imperialism - India

Malaria - history

Colonialism - history

Quinine - history

Cinchona

Mosquito Vectors

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: side effects of empire -- "Fairest of Peruvian maids": planting Cinchonas in British India -- "An imponderable poison": shifting geographies of a diagnostic category -- "A Cinchona disease": making Burdwan fever -- Beating about the bush": manufacturing quinine in a colonial factory -- Of "losses gladly borne": feeding quinine, warring mosquitoes -- Epilogue: empire, medicine and nonhumans.

Sommario/riassunto

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.