2 - Medical Intervention and Containment of Epidemics

Summary

The insufficient staff of assistant directors of public health and health officers is a defect that requires to be remedied…. The presidency towns and some of the large provincial towns have, as already stated, their health officers, but the civil surgeon has hitherto been the only health officer of the capital towns of the district. He cannot with all his other duties give the headquarters town a due share of attention; the most he can do is to inspect it occasionally and report on it perfunctorily. Sanitation is still far from efficient…. The conservancy and drainage are neglected, the water-supply is defective, animals and man are housed together, and in scores of ways the first principles of healthy living are violated.

In 1888 the Government of India decided that medical relief and public health should be added to the functions of local bodies. Paucity of funds, and a lack of technical personnel kept local services down at a very elementary level. Development was entirely controlled by government departments or district officers, who concentrated their attention upon services which contributed to administrative efficiency—such as communications.

The introduction of Western medicine in India by British colonialism is a milestone in the history of modern India. Many of the new ideas of medical science—hospitals, health, hygiene, sanitation—came to India with colonialism. At the same time, there evolved an encounter between Western and indigenous medicines—a cultural encounter between India's traditional society and the West. The relationship between Western and Indian medical systems has always been a significant topic in medical history, and in recent decades historical studies have focused on this relationship. In his essay titled ‘Medicine and Orientalism: Perspectives on Europe's Encounter with Indian Medical Systems’, Mark Harrison deftly examines this topic. Discussing both collaboration and contradiction in the relationship between the two in the course of passing through several stages from the seventeenth century onwards, Harrison mentions that the Europeans’ attitude towards Indian systems of medicine underwent a change after 1820. Using ‘native’ medicinal herbs, examining Indian medical literature, and consulting practitioners of Indian medical systems, European physicians made substantial use of indigenous medical knowledge.