Malarial subjects empire, medicine and nonhumans in British India, 1820-1909

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 categ...

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Bibliographic Details
Other Authors: Deb Roy, Rohan, author (author)
Format: eBook
Language:Inglés
Published: Cambridge, England : Cambridge University Press 2017.
Series:Science in history (Cambridge University Press)
Subjects:
See on Biblioteca Universitat Ramon Llull:https://discovery.url.edu/permalink/34CSUC_URL/1im36ta/alma991009654717906719
Description
Summary: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.
Physical Description:1 online resource (xv, 332 pages) : illustrations; digital file(s)
Also available in print form
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9781316771617