This feature on the ‘Medical History of British India’ provides an entry into the history of disease and its prevention in 19th and 20th-century British India.
Here you can browse and search nearly 50 Disease and Public Health reports which are held at the National Library of Scotland, and which are available for the first time online.
These rare documents, from our India Papers collection, record the demands placed by both epidemic and endemic diseases on the colonial Indian state and its development of public health in this period. The reports let you reconstruct the state’s efforts to study, understand and control diseases like cholera, plague, malaria and leprosy.
The India Papers at NLS is an extensive collection of official publications from British India. The digitisation of the medical history volumes was funded by awards from the Wellcome Trust.
