Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India (Volume 7) (Intoxicating Histories)

At present India is a leading producer, distributor, and consumer of generic medicines globally. Disparate Remedies traces the genealogy of this development and examines the public cultures of medicine in the country between 1870 and 1960.The book begins by discussing the expansion of medical consumerism in late nineteenth-century India when British-owned firms extended their sales into remote towns. As a result, laboratory-produced drugs competed with traditional remedies through side-by-side production of Western and Indian drugs by pharmaceutical companies. The emergent middle classes, the creation of a public sphere, and nationalist politics transformed the medical culture of modern India and generated conflict between Western and Indigenous medical systems and their practitioners. Nandini Bhattacharya demonstrates that these disparate therapies were sustained through the tropes of purity or adulteration, potency or lack of it, and epistemic heritage, even when their material configuration often differed little.Uniquely engaging with the cultures of both consumption and production in the country, Disparate Remedies follows the evolution of medicine in colonial India as it confronted Indian modernity and changing public attitudes surrounding health and drugs. Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India Cover Half Title Page Series Page Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Introduction Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India The Public in Modern India The Public Spheres of Medicine State Medicine in Colonial India Scientific Medicine and the Public in Colonial India Disparate Remedies 1 The Colonial Medicine Chest The Colonial Medicine Chest The Medical Market in Colonial India ‘European’ Drug Houses: Expanding the Medical Market Conclusion: New Markets in British India 2 The Bazaar and the Indigenous Pharmaceuticals Industry The ‘Bazaar Market’ Swadeshi Nationalism and the Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works Alembic Chemical Works and Indigenous Enterprise Indigenous Drugs Manufacture and ‘English’ Medicines Conclusion: The Pharmacy and the Bazaar 3 For a Pharmacopeia for India Bazaar Drugs and the Indian Materia Medica The Many Pharmacopeias of India Towards the Definitive Pharmacopeia Impurity and the Problem of Standardization The Impossibility of an Indian Pharmacopeia Conclusion 4 The Promises and Forfeiture of Import Substitution The Government Medical Store and the Problem of Substitution The Expansion and the Limits of the GMS Medicines and the Military-Commercial Enterprise The War and the Search for Substitutes: Local Production with Indigenous Drugs Medical Discourse and Local Drugs for Local Treatments The GMS and the Cultivation of Substitute Medical Drugs: Digitalis Conclusion: The Forfeiture of the Promise of Import Substitution 5 Adulteration and the Medical Market The Ambiguities of Adulteration Adulteration and Disparate Dispensing Legislating Adulteration The Long Half-life of the DEC Report 6 Disparate Dispensing: Pharmacy in the Eclectic Market The Compounder and the ‘Independent Medical Practitioner’ Prescriptions and Proprietaries: From Compounders to Pharmacists? Conclusion: The Compounder and the Fluid Medical Market 7 Drugs for the Nation Postcolonial Conundrums: Self-Sufficiency and the Biomedicine Gap The War and the Pharmaceutical Industry The Marginalisation of Botanical and Mineral Drugs Self-Sufficiency and the Nation-State Indigenous Medicine in Independent India Conclusion Medical Cultures in Modern India Medical Pluralism and the Global South Medical Cultures in Modern India Notes Bibliography Unpublished Records Periodicals Official Reports Published Books and Articles Unpublished Thesis Index "At present India is a leading producer, distributor, and consumer of generic medicines globally. Disparate Remedies traces the genealogy of this development and examines the public cultures of medicine in the country between 1870 and 1960. The book begins by discussing the expansion of medical consumerism in late nineteenth-century India when British-owned firms extended their sales to distant provincial towns. As a result, laboratory-produced drugs competed with traditional street remedies through side-by-side production of ‘Western’ and ‘Indian’ drugs by pharmaceutical companies. The emergent middle classes, the creation of a public sphere, and nationalist politics transformed the medical culture of modern India and generated conflict between Western and Indigenous medical systems and their practitioners. Nandini Bhattacharya demonstrates that these disparate therapies were sustained through the tropes of purity or adulteration, potency or lack of it, and epistemic heritage, even when their material configuration often differed little. Uniquely engaging with the cultures of both consumption and production in the country, Disparate Remedies follows the evolution of medicine in colonial India as it confronted Indian modernity and changing public attitudes surrounding health and drugs."-- Provided by publisher