Patterns of Medical Culture in Colonial Bengal, 1835-1880

Scholars of colonial medicine have not paid sufficient attention to the role of indigenous practitioners educated in scientific medicine. This paper examines the context of education in scientific medicine through a number of medical texts written by indigenous authors; it also analyzes the in-patient and out-patient work of indigenous practitioners in government dispensaries by means of yearly dispensary reports, a resource that has hitherto not been researched systematically. Such an analysis offers valuable insights into the way that scientific medicine was accommodated by the local environment, and was combined with principles of indigenous medicine.