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Scourge of Sitala: Small Pox Mortality in Colonial Bengal: A Statistical Analysis for the Year 1926


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1 Rabindra Bharati University, India
 

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As the Europeans settled in the coasts of India, penetrated the interiors and colonized the land, they were frequently struck down with many tropical diseases. One amongst those which affected them dearly was the like Small Pox virus. Small Pox occupied an acrid place in the history of European medical ideas and practices in the 19th century India. With the takeover of the Empire by the Crown in 1858, army health became the prime concern of the colonial policy.1 David Arnold in his ‘Colonising the Body; State, Medicine and Epidemic Disease in19th C India’, had stated that disease was a potent factor in the European conceptualisation of indigenous society. Mark Harrison in his ‘Public Health in British India: Anglo Indian Preventive Medicine’ had explored on the theoretical and administrative aspects of Anglo-Indian preventive medicines in association with various diseases which the indigenous population faced. Poonam Bala in her ‘Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: a Socio-Historical Perspective’ had discussed on the different facets of the establishment of the European medicine in colonial Bengal. Epidemics caused massive fatality among the European Army. The British physicians in the 19th Century ranked Small Pox among the most prevalent and destructive of all epidemic diseases. Small Pox accounted for several million deaths in the 19th Century alone amounting on average to more than one hundred thousand fatal cases a year.2 This paper intends to explore the mortality picture of Bengal during the year 1926. In the process, detailed discussion would be undertaken to highlight the mortality rate among infants and how the disease affected the health of the children in colonial Bengal during 1926.


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  • D.G Crawford, A History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600-1913, Vol 2, 1914, p197 London: W. Thacker & Co, India Office Record, London

  • Ibid, p2

  • Roy Macleod, Milton Lewis. Disease, Medicine, and Empire: Perspectives on Western Medicine and the Experience of European Expansion. London, Routledge, 1988. pp 1-6.

  • Proceedings of the Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, Municipal Department, Medical Branch, Calcutta, Jan 1875, File No 3, 10, 2, Pro No 1730. IOR, London

  • Ibid

  • Ibid

  • Ibid

  • WIHM Crawford Collection: D.G Crawford, ‘What The Indian Medical Service has done for India’, Indian Medical Gazette, June 1912, No 6. India Office Record (IOR), London

  • Reports of the Bengal Sanitary Board and Chief Engineer, Public Health Department, 1926, IOR, London

  • Ibid

  • Ibid

  • Ibid

  • Proceedings of the Lieutenant- Governor of Bengal, Municipal Department, Medical Branch, Calcutta, Jan 1875- Dec 1940, File No 3, 10, 2, Pro No 17-30. IOR, London

  • Ibid

  • Ibid

  • Bengal Public Health Report, Government of Bengal, 1924-1947, IOR, London 17. Ibid

  • Ibid

  • Report on the vaccinator proceedings throughout the government of Bengal, Goverment of Bengal, and 1924-1947, IOR, London

  • Proceedings of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, Medical Department, 1880, File No 3, 10, 2, Pro No 17-30, IOR, London.


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  • Scourge of Sitala: Small Pox Mortality in Colonial Bengal: A Statistical Analysis for the Year 1926

Abstract Views: 344  |  PDF Views: 133

Authors

Nilanjana Basu
Rabindra Bharati University, India

Abstract


As the Europeans settled in the coasts of India, penetrated the interiors and colonized the land, they were frequently struck down with many tropical diseases. One amongst those which affected them dearly was the like Small Pox virus. Small Pox occupied an acrid place in the history of European medical ideas and practices in the 19th century India. With the takeover of the Empire by the Crown in 1858, army health became the prime concern of the colonial policy.1 David Arnold in his ‘Colonising the Body; State, Medicine and Epidemic Disease in19th C India’, had stated that disease was a potent factor in the European conceptualisation of indigenous society. Mark Harrison in his ‘Public Health in British India: Anglo Indian Preventive Medicine’ had explored on the theoretical and administrative aspects of Anglo-Indian preventive medicines in association with various diseases which the indigenous population faced. Poonam Bala in her ‘Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: a Socio-Historical Perspective’ had discussed on the different facets of the establishment of the European medicine in colonial Bengal. Epidemics caused massive fatality among the European Army. The British physicians in the 19th Century ranked Small Pox among the most prevalent and destructive of all epidemic diseases. Small Pox accounted for several million deaths in the 19th Century alone amounting on average to more than one hundred thousand fatal cases a year.2 This paper intends to explore the mortality picture of Bengal during the year 1926. In the process, detailed discussion would be undertaken to highlight the mortality rate among infants and how the disease affected the health of the children in colonial Bengal during 1926.


References