ABSTRACT
British efforts to extend Western medical institutions, preventative measures and treatment regimens in India have spawned lively debates among historians of medicine as to the British objectives, target audiences and effectiveness in maintaining and improving the health of its own community and its Indian subjects. Most historical and social science research has focused on policies in the three-fifths of India that the British ruled directly and primarily on men, whether British or Indian. 1 A few scholars have concentrated on whether the British did or did not pay any attention to the health of Indian women. 2 As with many subfields in historical research on India during the colonial period, the health of men and women as well as the extension of allopathic medicine and Western public institutions in the two-fifths of India indirectly ruled by the Indian princes has received even less consideration. Research on the health of women in the princely states would provide knowledge of
whether and how these Indian princes, their administrations, and their subjects allocated resources to improving the health of their women subjects through Western medicine and with what success;
whether support of allopathic medicine was primarily an instrument of European colonial powers seeking to reinforce their authority or whether Indian princely states and their rulers might have used such medicine for similar or different goals.
