Med Hist
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Historical Article
Debating scientific medicine: homoeopathy and allopathy in late nineteenth-century medical print in Bengal.
The historiography of medicine in South Asia often assumes the presence of preordained, homogenous, coherent and clearly-bound medical systems. They also tend to take the existence of a medical 'mainstream' for granted. This article argues that the idea of an 'orthodox', 'mainstream' named allopathy and one of its 'alternatives' homoeopathy were co-produced in Bengal. ⋯ The article highlights these published disputes and critical correspondence among physicians as instrumental in simultaneously shaping the categories 'allopathy' and 'homoeopathy' in Bengali print. It unravels how contemporary understandings of race, culture and nationalism informed these medical discussions. It further explores the status of these medical contestations, often self-consciously termed 'debates', as an essential contemporary trope in discussing 'science' in the vernacular.
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Historical Article
"Divine stramonium": the rise and fall of smoking for asthma.
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Historical Article
Empire and alternatives: Swietenia febrifuga and the Cinchona substitutes.