Medicine and Empire

The history of modern medicine is inseparable from the history of imperialism. Medicine and Empire provides an introduction to this shared history - spanning three centuries and covering British, French and Spanish imperial histories in Africa, Asia and America. Exploring the major developments in European medicine from the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century, Pratik Chakrabarti shows that the major developments in European medicine had a colonial counterpart and were closely intertwined with European activities overseas: * the increasing influence of natural history on medicine * the growth of European drug markets * the rise of surgeons in status * ideas of race and racism * advancements in sanitation and public health * the expansion of the modern quarantine system * the emergence of Germ theory and global vaccination campaigns. Drawing on recent scholarship and primary texts, this book narrates a mutually constitutive history in which medicine was both a 'tool' and a product of imperialism, and provides an original, accessible insight into the deep historical roots of the problems that plague global health today.