Pratik Chakrabarti, Medicine & Empire: 1600-1960

Abstract

Pratik Chakrabarti's latest book is a splendid attempt to condense 360 years—spanning the Galenic tradition to the genetic revolution—of the intertwined history of medicine and empire into 200 pages. The first chapter, covering the years 1600–1800, begins by describing how European armies—vying to secure trading monopolies—needed surgeons at-hand in the colonies. This explains why it was surgeons, rather than physicians, who powered the expansion of the European pharmacopoeia. Chakrabarti vividly explains how they adopted slave therapeutics, trialled ‘exotic’ medicines in the field, and even engaged in piracy—making individual surgeons very rich, and surgery as a profession highly respected. These field surgeons learnt much from traditional plant-based medicines. Chapter 2 takes up this story of colonial bioprospection. This intellectual and commercial ‘exchange’ between Old and New World pharmacopoeias disproportionately enriched the European materia medica, whilst local healing traditions (e.g. voodoo and obeah) were suppressed and outlawed by white planters, in part because of their supposed role in inciting slave rebellions.