Article contents
Colonialism and Sanitary Medicine: The Development of Preventive Health Policy in the Punjab, 1860 to 1900
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Extract
The system of medicine known today variously as ‘international,’ ‘scientific,’ or ‘Western’ entered South Asia as early as the seventeenth century. For two centuries this system, known in India as allopathic medicine, coexisted with the medical traditions indigenous to South Asia. In 1835 the period of coexistence ended and the adherents of the allopathic tradition began to press claims that they, and only they, should be allowed to direct and staff the medical and health programs of the East India Company and, after 1858, the various Governments of South Asia. Allopathic medical men wished to decide the goal or goals of governmental medical efforts, who was to be allowed to participate in those efforts, and who was to be served by those programs. In short, allopathic medical men wanted control of the development of all facets of health policy in South Asia.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986
References
1 Maru, Rushikesh M., ‘Health Manpower Strategies for Rural Health Services in India and China: 1949–1975,’ Social Science and Medicine XI (1977): 535–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This article is used as an example of a large body of literature on this topic. I have borrowed the terms ‘professional’ and ‘populist’ as defined by Maru. For a scathing official report of the results of the professional paradigm see West Pakistan, Health Department, Health Study Group Report (Lahore, 1971). However, the recommendations of this group called for a reorganization of the existing health services and for the expenditure of more money. It specifically recommended against any expansion of use of practitioners of indigenous systems of medicine.
2 India, Health Survey and Development Committee, Report (Delhi, 1946).Google Scholar See also India (Republic), Health Survey and Planning Committee, Report 08–10 1961 (Delhi, 1962).Google Scholar See as well India (Republic), Planning Commission, Five Year Plans (New Delhi, 1952, 1956, 1961, 1970).Google Scholar For Pakistan see Pakistan, Planning Commission, Five Year Plans (1957, 1965, 1969, 1970). See as well ‘Alternate, P. M. A.People's Health Scheme’, The Bulletin: Journal of the P. M. A. West Wing, V (06 1972) Special issue.Google Scholar
3 Hume, John C. Jr, Imperialism and the Health of the Public: Administrative Conflict, Community, Professionalization, and Racism in the Development of Health Policy in South Asia, 1823–1941. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
4 A partial and very idealized history of the organization of Anglo-Indian medicine is provided in Crawford, Dirom Grey, A History of the Indian Medical Service, 2 vols (London, 1914).Google Scholar See also Hume, John C. Jr, ‘Medicine in the Punjab 1849–1911: Ethnicity and Professionalization in the Control of an Occupation’, Ph.D. Dissertation, Duke University, Durham, N.C., 1977, ch. 2.Google Scholar
5 Cameron, W., ‘On Vaccination in Bengal’, Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, V (1831): 385–96.Google Scholar
6 Martin, James Ranald, b. 12 May 1776Google Scholar, Isle of Skye. d. 27 November 1874 in London. Educated at St Georges and Windmill Street School. C.C.S., 1811, M.R.C.S., 1845; C.B., 25 April 1860. Entered the Bengal Medical Service 5 September 1817. Retired 10 May 1842. Served as Examining Physician to the Secretary of State for India, 1859–64, President of the Medical Board, India Office, 1864–74; Member of the Royal Commission on the Health of Towns (1843), Royal Commission to Inquire into the Conditions of the Army Medical Department (1857), Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India (1863). Crawford, Dirom Grey, Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615–1930 (Calcutta and Simla; 1930), p. 71Google Scholar, Bengal list #797. SirFayrer, Joseph, Life of the Inspector General Sir James Ranald Martin (London, 1897), D.N.B., 12, pp. 1165–6.Google Scholar
7 Martin, J. R., Report on the Climate and Topography of Calcutta (Calcutta 1847).Google Scholar
8 Fayrer, , Martin, pp. 53–65.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., chs 6–9.
10 Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers, (Commons) 1863, vol. 19, C1384, ‘Report on the Commissioners appointed to Inquire into the Sanitary State of the Army in India,’ pp. 156–7.Google Scholar
11 Ibid.
12 Cuningham, James McNabb, b. 2 June 1829Google Scholar, Cape of Good Hope. d. 26 June 1905. Educated at Edinburgh. M.D., 1851, L.L.D., 1892; C.S.I., 1885, Q.H.S., 1888. Entered the Bengal Medical Service 10 November 1851. The offices of Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India and that of surgeon-general with the Government of India were combined and held by Cuningham from 1880 to 1885. In 1895, Cuningham represented the Government of India at the International Medical Congress where his anti-contagionist views were greeted with some surprise and embarrassment by his I.M.S. colleagues. Crawford, , Roll, p. 138Google Scholar, Bengal list # 1582. D.N.B., 23, p. 451. ‘Editorial’, Indian Medical Gazette (1895): 310–11.Google Scholar
13 Great Britain, Parliament, Parliamentary Papers, (Commons) 1866, vol. 15, ‘Report of the Bengal Sanitary Commission,’ p. 56.Google Scholar
14 Annesley Charles Castroit DeRenzy. b. 7 April 1828, Carnew, County Wicklow, Ireland, d. 24 December 1914, Ealing. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, B.A., 1851, M.R.C.S., 1851; C.B., 1881, K.C.B., 1902. Entered the Bengal Medical Service 29 July 1851. De Renzy was awarded the C.B. for activities connected with the Naga Campaign of 1874–80. Crawford, , Roll, p. 138, Bengal list # 1576. PGHOSOGO. Punjab Government, Government Gazette, Lahore, 1862–76.Google ScholarBritish Medical Journal (3 10 1914): 698.Google Scholar
15 PSR (1868): 1–3.Google Scholar See also Cuningham, James M.. ‘On the Duties of the Sanitary Commissioners,’ Bengal Sanitary Report (1868), appendix A, pp. i–iv.Google Scholar
16 For further discussion of the hakim program see Hume, John C. Jr, ‘Rival Traditions: Western Medicine and Yunan i-tibb in the Punjab, 1849–1889,’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine XV (07 1977): 214–31.Google Scholar
17 PGP. HG, 1858, November 28, B file, nos 82–9. See also PSR (1868): 1141–5.Google Scholar
18 The term professional suggests an occupation in which some occupational subgroup attempts to gain control of occupational resources by asserting that the group possesses systematized knowledge of a highly technical quality which cannot be questioned by the uninitiated. Thus, the controversy between Cuningham and DeRenzy was more than a discussion of esoteric theoretical matters. It was an argument about who, physically and intellectually, should direct government's expenditures in medical matters and about who should benefit from these expenditures—both in terms of employment and in terms of who receives health care.
19 PSR (1867): 2728.Google Scholar
20 Snow, John, John Snow on Cholera, Being a Reprint of Two Papers by John Snow, M.D. Together with a Biographical Memior by B. W. Richardson, M.D. and an Introduction by Wade Hampton Frost, M.D. (New York and London, 1965)Google Scholar facsimile of 1936 ed. For DeRenzy's, remarks see PSR (1869): 2425.Google Scholar
21 Butler, D., ‘On Public Health in India,’ Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta, iii (1827): 330–50.Google Scholar See also Ackernecht, Erwin H., ‘Anticontagionism Between 1821–1857’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine xxii (09–10 1948): 562–93.Google Scholar
22 PSR (1868): 25, 39.Google Scholar
23 PSR (1868): iii.Google Scholar
24 DeRenzy, A. C. C., On the Causation of Typhoid, and Sanitary Improvement in India (Lahore, 1873).Google Scholar
25 PSR (1872): 2.Google Scholar
26 Ibid.
27 DeRenzy, A. C. C., Remarks on the Report of the Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India on the Cholera Epidemic of 1872 in Northern India (Lahore, 1874).Google Scholar
28 Ibid., pp. 25–6.
29 Ibid., p. 28.
30 PGP HG, 1874, A file no. 8, December.
31 Ibid.
32 PGP HG, 1875, A file no. 11, January.
33 PGP HG, 1875, A file no. 11, February.
34 PGP HG, 1875, A file no. 15, February.
35 PSR Review, (1868): iii–iv.Google Scholar
36 DeRenzy, , Remarks, p. 27.Google ScholarPSR Review (1871): 2.Google Scholar
37 DeRenzy, , Sanitary Improvement, p. 11.Google Scholar
38 Spanberg, Bradford, British Bureaucracy in India (Delhi, 1976), p. 89.Google Scholar
39 Henry Walter Bellew. b. 30 August 1834, Nusserabad, India, d. 26 July 1892, Farham Royal, Bucks. Educated at St Georges. M.R.C.S., 1854, L.S.A., 1854; C.S.I., 1873. Bellew was well known as a political commentator on N.W.F. matters. He was a linguist of considerable reputation and much of his early career in India was with the Foreign Department. Bellew and Cuningham had serious difficulties over Bellew's alleged and unprofessional behavior when Bellew attempted to acquire a patent for a cholera cure. Cuningham's handling of the matter turned what might have been a humorous interlude into a nightmare for Bellew. Bellew was censured by the Government of India and retired soon after. The Punjab government did nothing to assist Bellew during this episode. In part, the reason for the Punjab government's inaction seems to be their desire to reappoint A. M. Dallas as their chief medical administrator. Had Bellew not been in disgrace he, not Dallas, would have become Inspector General of Civil Hospitals on the basis of seniority. Crawford, , Roll, p. 151Google Scholar, Bengal list # 1706, D.N.B., vol. 12, pp. 167–8.Google Scholar PGHSOGO. HSGO, 1884. Punjab, Gazette, 1868–72. Lancet, (6 August 1892): 342–3. British Medical Journal (13 August 1892): 391–2.Google Scholar For the dispute between Bellew and Cuninghamsee PGPHM&S, 1885, 8 file no. 85, January, and PGP HM&S, 1885, B file nos. 43–4, August.
40 Hume, ‘Rival Traditions’.
41 PGPHG, 1876, A file no. 6, May; 1876, A file no. 21, May; 1876, A file no. 8, July; 1876, A file no. 5, September.
42 PSR Review (1876): 2.Google Scholar
43 PGP HG, 1877, A file no. 7, November; 1878, A file no. 3, January.
44 PGP HG, 1878, A file no. 12, February.
45 PGP HG, 1878, A file no. 12, March.
46 PSR Review (1878): 3.Google Scholar
47 PGP HM&S, 1886, A file no. 18, May.
48 PGP HM&S, 1885, B file nos. 40–1, February. The Dallas promotion was criticized by an editorial in Lancet (15 November 1884): 884–5. HoweverGoogle Scholar, DeRenzy, A. C. C. supported the Dallas promotion in a letter to the editor, Lancet (22 November 1884): 935.Google Scholar
49 PGP HM&S, 1887, A file nos 1–6, November; 1878, A file no. 7, January; 1888, A file no. 8, October; 1889, A file nos 16–32, June; 1889, A file nos 4–7, October; 1890, A file nos 7, January; 1888, A file no. 8, October; 1889, A file nos 16–32, June; 1889, A file nos 4–7, October; 1890, A file nos 28–9, August.
50 PSR (1898–1900). The Report of the Punjab Sanitary Board appears as an appendix to the yearly PSR.Google Scholar
51 PGP HG, 1876, A file no. 6, May.
52 PGP HG, 1878, A file no. 12, February.
53 PGP HM&S, 1886, B file no. 18, May.
- 8
- Cited by