Modernity, the State, and New Medical Histories in Non-European Contexts

Abstract

Histories of medicine and science in the colonies have, conceptually and theoretically, travelled some distance in the last three decades. While public health and epidemics in certain Asian contexts,1and mental health and medical stereotypes in the African case,2appear to have preoccupied historians during the early years, there has been an increasing willingness to charter new paths and explore new possibilities. This has made the sub-discipline more exciting and inter-disciplinary – for example, the move away from the state and its discourses has led to an increased attention to other forms of medical treatments and their interactions with regional publics. The interdisciplinarity, too, is evident in seemingly innocuous changes. For instance, medical historians have begun to make more frequent use of the term ‘health’, which, until the noughties at least, was a concept mostly employed by sociologists and anthropologists. It is heartening to see that all four books under review, to a greater or lesser extent, bridge these divides in obvious and not-so-obvious ways.