Women Question and Public Health Administration in Colonial Bengal, 1880s–1940s

Abstract

Is it possible for medical practitioners to complete their professional training and pursue their careers without understanding the history of public health? The evolution of public health over time holds significant implications for the appropriate responses to modern-day challenges in public health practice. The article emphasises the changing nature of healthcare practices in the late years of the Raj and draws attention to the growth of public health administration and its impact on women’s health. The last two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed debates and discussions on disseminating health education among women through different agencies. There was a noticeable growth of voluntary associations devoted to maternal and child health care. Not only the Dufferin Fund but also different philanthropic organisations set up by British elite women and thus closely connected to the colonial state like the Lady Reading Fund, Lady Chelmsford Fund, and so on, became involved in providing professional training for Indian women in medicine (doctors, hospital assistants, midwives, nurses, health visitors, etc.), establishing hospitals and dispensaries dedicated to women and children in the urban and rural areas, organising healthcare activities for them (baby shows and welfare exhibition), among others. The proceedings of these voluntary associations, journals like the Indian Medical Gazette, government reports on the subject, along with the archival documents help to understand how the women’s healthcare issues were addressed by different agencies (colonial state, medical practitioners and philanthropic organisations) through educational and medical interventions between the 1880s and the 1940s.