Deerpaul Yadhav, Springer Alexander, Gooding Philip
Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA.
Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
Med Hist. 2024 Sep 13;68(4):1-21. doi: 10.1017/mdh.2024.24.
This article reconstructs the first outbreak of epidemic dropsy recorded in documentary evidence, which occurred in Calcutta, Mauritius, and northeastern India and Bengal in 1877-80. It uses current medical knowledge and investigations into the wider historical contexts in which the epidemic occurred to re-read the colonial medical literature of the period. It shows that colonial policies and structures in the context of variable enviro-climatic conditions increased the likelihood that an epidemic would break out, while also increasing the vulnerability of certain populations to infection and mortality. Additionally, it shows how the trans-regional nature of the epidemic contributed to varying understandings of the disease between two colonial medical establishments, which influenced each other in contradictory ways. The article's core contributions are to recent trans-regional perspectives on disease transmission and colonial medical knowledge production in the Indian Ocean World.
本文重构了文献记载中首次出现的流行性水肿疫情，该疫情于1877年至1880年在加尔各答、毛里求斯以及印度东北部和孟加拉发生。文章运用当前医学知识，并对该疫情发生的更广泛历史背景进行调查，以重新解读那个时期的殖民医学文献。研究表明，在多变的环境气候条件下，殖民政策和结构增加了疫情爆发的可能性，同时也增加了某些人群感染和死亡的易感性。此外，文章还展示了疫情的跨区域性质如何导致两个殖民医疗机构对该疾病产生不同的理解，而这种理解又以相互矛盾的方式相互影响。本文的核心贡献在于为印度洋世界疾病传播和殖民医学知识生产的最新跨区域视角提供了参考。
