Shot in the arm for Medical History website

A new collection of medical documents from the British Raj is now available to browse and search on the Medical History of British India website. 'Medicine - Vaccination' shows British efforts to vaccinate the Indian population against smallpox using the latest 19th and 20th century western scientific techniques. Over 60 reports reveal the complex nature and the scale of ambition of the vaccination programme in India as well as the conflict between western colonial medicine and indigenous society, culture and systems. The project was generously funded by a grant from the Wellcome Trust.

Louis Pasteur

Following my last post about Robert Koch's visit to India in 1897, I have been reading about another world renowned scientist's contribution to veterinary medicine. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895, pictured) is credited with discovering that microbes cause disease and is admired still for his pioneering work in microbiology. The French scientist began studying anthrax and fowl cholera in the late 1870's. Inspired by Jenner's inoculation against smallpox, Pasteur weakened (attenuated) the fowl cholera bacteria and created a vaccine that prevented animals contracting the disease.
In 1855 his rabies vaccine was tested on 9 year old Joseph Meister who had been bitten many times by a rabid dog. The boy lived and the vaccine was another one of his achievements that saved millions of human and animal lives.
Rabies features heavily in the Medical History of British India Project as it infects both animals and humans. Notable volumes I have worked with include:
Sir David Semple's work in India on his 1911 vaccine
Pasteur Institute at Kasauli
Pasteur Institute of Southern India
Various articles featuring in the Indian Journal of Veterinary Science and animal husbandry
Plus a recent book (2007) on rabies in Britain Mad Dogs and Englishmen

There is no doubt that both Koch and Pasteur were brilliant scientists, but there are also many more who did important work in the field of microbiology and veterinary medicine. I will be writing about those I have found in the veterinary volumes in the coming weeks.
Picture of Pasteur holding eyeglasses credit: Wellcome Images.

Do you want to be in my gang?

The King Institute of Preventive Medicine in Guindy undertook a variety of medical work and its annual reports have just been microfilmed. Through checking the films this week I have been re-acquainted with one of my favourite institutions.
This is because the reports give a lively and vivid snapshot of life at the institute between 1906 and 1932, not to mention that prominent figures in the medical field worked there.
The Bacteriological Section produced vaccines, including prophylactic cholera and combined typhoid and paratyphoid (T.A.B.) vaccines, anti-meningococcus vaccine and anti-influenza vaccines, the numbers produced appearing in these reports. Investigation units were engaged in the field and reported on outbreaks of diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, dysentery, relapsing fever, gastro-enteritis, glandular fever, malaria and chicken pox in both settlements and jails.
It was in the 1922-23 report from Alipuram Jail, Bellary, that I came across the term “bowel gang.” 1,250 men were found to be suffering from latent dysentery: “These men were constituted into a “Bowel gang” housed separately; dieted and treated for their conditions. They were given suitable work in their own enclosure, and were not allowed to mix with the rest of the convicts.” (page 31, click on the image to view the paragraph from the report) This system seemed to work and cases of dysentery were reduced within 3 months, although I shudder to think of the indignity of being a member of such a gang. I wonder, also, if the members knew of the designation that was given to them to aid medical research and disease control.
The King Institute of Preventive Medicine is still in operation. Visit its website at http://www.tnhealth.org/meking.htm

Scientific Memoirs

This week I finished cataloguing (adding metadata to a database for each page) a series called Scientific Memoirs by Officers of the Medical and Sanitary Departments of the Government of India. This was the first Anglo-Indian publication entirely devoted to biological research. Published in Calcutta from the late 1890's to 1913, there is much pioneering medical work in these volumes.

There is still no vaccine for malaria, but in these memoirs scientist S. R. Christophers, a celebrated and lifelong malariologist, was studying the transmission of malaria (it is now known from Ronald Ross that the Plasmodium parasite was carried in female mosquito saliva and injected into its victim). There are reports of anti-malarial operations at Mian Mir, where standing water, breeding grounds of the Anopheles mosquito, were being destroyed in an attempt to control the disease.

Christophers also worked on kala azar, a deadly disease caused by the parasite Leishmania donovani, which causes fevers, enlargement of the liver and lowers immunity. It is known as Dum Dum Fever or Black Fever and is transmitted via the bite of a female sandfly.

Another microbiologist, W. S. Patton, was sure that the parasite was present in bedbugs and he spent many years studying these insects and his work is also in the Scientific Memoirs. It makes me feel itchy just thinking about his experiments!

Also in the Memoirs is a book by David Semple from 1911 when he developed his Semple rabies vaccine from Pasteur's original. There is work on cholera by D. D. Cunningham who was born in Prestonpans, and plenty of reading about snake venoms and anti-venomous sera, dysentery, typhoid fever and black-water fever.

Click on the image to see David Prain's 1904 drawings of cannabis plants.

What I find fascinating about these volumes is the scientific rigour that was applied to the work and the excitement of new discoveries. These scientists are truly amazing and as Robert S. Desowitz says, "they pursued their microbial quarry with a tenacity that by today's standards of paid-for-by-project research seems almost quixotic." (The Malaria Capers, p.41)

Medical History of British India Project

Have you heard of a bowel gang? Or why a woman was living in a rum-barrel in 1878? Do you wonder how vaccines are made? What was it like to be in the army in India in the last quarter of the 19th century? What did medical students study in Nagpur and how many passed their exams?

The answers to all these questions are contained in the Medical History of British India collection of the India Papers. The project involves microfilming the books and then digitising the film to produce images which can be viewed online. Each page of the 126 volumes will be available free of charge. The project is funded by the Wellcome Trust and forms Phase 2 of the web feature Disease prevention and Public Health Medical History of British India.
The items are rare, dating from ca1850 to ca1950 and are of interest to medical historians and genealogists as well as to the casual reader. The content is legible and makes for fascinating reading, not only from a medical perspective, but also from a social and geographical one. There are many tables of detailed information, plus drawings, photographs and maps. Although most volumes are in a report format, they offer an absorbing glimpse into a world long gone, and yet many of the issues resonate today. Click on the images to see a cholera map of India and patients suffering from kala azar.

As project manager and metadata creator I shall be sharing some of my finds each week in this blog. From hemp to hospitals, from monkeys to malaria, from research to rabies and from cholera to quinine, there is much to explore in this compelling collection.