Leprosy in Colonial South India Medicine and Confinement [Hardcover]

Leprosy is a neglected topic in the burgeoning field of the history of medicine and the colonized body. Leprosy in Colonial South India is not only a history of an intriguing and dramatic endemic disease, it is a history of colonial power in nineteenth-century British India as seen through the lens of British medical and legal encounters with leprosy and its sufferers in south India. Leprosy in Colonial South India offers a detailed examination of the contribution of leprosy treatment and legislative measures to negotiated relationships between indigenous and British medicine and the colonial impact on indigenous class formation, while asserting the agency of the poor and vagrant leprous classes in their own history.Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction Indian and British Concepts of Leprosy and of the Leprosy Sufferer Patient or Prisoner? Leprosy Sufferers in British Institutional Care Colonial Medicine in the Indigenous Context Leprosy Treatment: Indigenous and British Approaches Leprosy Research and the Development of Colonial Medical Science The Politics of Leprosy Control Confining Leprosy Sufferers: The Lepers Act Conclusion Notes Biographies Bibliography IndexJANE BUCKINGHAM is Lecturer in South Asian History at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Her research took her not only to the libraries and archives of the UK and India but to the leprosy hospitals and rehabilitation centres of the South Indian heartland.