Histories of health and materiality in the Indian Ocean world : medicine, material culture and trade, 1600-2000

Introducing materiality into the study of the history of medicine, this volume hones in on communities across the Indian Ocean World and explores how they understood and engaged with health and medical commodities. Opening up spatial dimensions and challenging existing approaches to knowledge, power and the market, it defines 'therapeutic commodity' and explores how different materials were understood and engaged with in various settings and for a number of purposes. Offering new spatial realms within which the circulation of commodities created new regimes of meaning, Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World demonstrates how medicinal substances have had immediate and far-reaching economic and political consequences in various capacities. From midwifery and umbilical cords, to the social spaces of soap, perfumes in early modern India and remedies for leprosy, this volume considers a vast range of material culture in medicinal settings to better understand the history of medicine and its role in global connections since the early 17th century. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Figures Contributors Abbreviations Acknowledgements Chapter 1: Health, medicine and trade in the Indian Ocean world: A material culture approach Chapter 2: ‘Europe does not want you’: Natural history, materia medica and the empire Chapter 3: In pursuit of a healing Eden: Exploring the medico-botanical networks of knowledge circulation in the Indian Ocean region with special reference to South India, 1600–1800 CE Chapter 4: Rhubarb in the Indian Ocean world: The entangled itinerary of a material complex Chapter 5: Perfumes in early modern India: Ephemeral materiality and aromatic mobility Chapter 6: Letters to the Vaidyan: The circulation of Ayurvedic drugs and knowledge from Kottakkal Aryavaidyasala to South-east Asia Chapter 7: Toxic trading: Poisons and medicines in British India Chapter 8: ‘The all-cleansing soap’? History of soap in Keralam c. 1880–1950 Chapter 9: Chaulmoogra: Indian Ocean world leprosy remedies in the South Pacific Chapter 10: Bodies in circulation: Determining age and regulating health of transported convicts to the Andamans, c.1860s–1920s Chapter 11: From tribal knowledge to Ayurvedic medicine: Transition of Arogyapacha, the wonder herb of Kerala Chapter 12: Of miracle drugs, Captain Hooks and Colonialism 2.0: Bioprospecting, biopiracy and the patenting of tribal bioresources and medicinal knowledge Chapter 13: Privileging the body: The bio-materialization of medicine and the asymmetrical production of pluralism Select Bibliography Index