While literature on medicine and colonialism has increased rapidly in the past nearly two decades, this volume presents yet another way of looking at ideas of medicine, health, and disease. It portrays the role played by power in various ways in which biomedicine became a site of contested ventures_a site which saw an interplay of medicine, ruling ideologies, and resistance by indigenous populations. Ideas of disease and health range from control of infectious diseases and epidemics, medications and indigenous therapeutics, clinical medicine and surgery, to reproductive health, with the added dimension of medical pluralism and elites as enabling these interactions and processes. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students of history, sociology, anthropology, medicine, and public health. With essays on different regions around the world, it will serve as a guide to scholars and students in colonial studies, history of medicine, and world history.

Poonam Bala is the author of Imperialism and Medicine in Bengal: A Socio-Historical Perspective (Sage, 1992) and Medicine and Medical Policies in India: Social and Historical Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2007).