The Absence of the Female in Medical Discourses of 19th century Bengal

Abstract

The 19th century also witnessed a plethora of innovations in medicine that led to the rejection of the theory of miasma giving rise to a new perspective on human body and the diseases thereof which facilitated substantial study on tropical medicine and diseases by the imperial administration. Few contemporary novels bear testimony to this advancement of medicine and the advent of natives in the military and civil medical services. The paper, in question, will utilise one such novel that is, Banaphool’s Agniswar as an entrepot to question the absence of women in the evolving 19th century colonial medical discourse as active beneficiaries. It would seek to establish that women suffered worse than their male counterparts as their diseases were considered to be private affairs to be dealt exclusively within the confines of the household. The paper will commence by classifying contemporary females under three heads that is Memsahibs, Bhadramahilas, and the rest followed by studying them on the basis of Edward John Tilt’s Health in India for British Women, the case of Queen Empress vs Hurree Mohun Mythee, 26th July, 1890, and finally Ranajit Guha’s Chandra’s Death. To sum up, the female bodies will be studied as homogenous, dehumanized, and malleable, spaces appropriated by the males both native and colonial, to serve as sites of performative resistance against polluting mutual influences. Additionally, as female bodies they were intended to be ideologically consumable objects embodying the discourses of purity of the respective civilizations. Protecting the female body, claiming ownership, and control followed by the apathy of the colonial administration will be demonstrated as a reflection of medicine and public health in colonial India as a selective enterprise seeking to maximize economic and political gains.