ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three intertwined aspects of arsenic poisoning: its causes, health consequences and health care systems in Bangladesh within which arsenic-affected individuals seek health care services. It was the Aryans who contributed to the establishment of Vedic medicine in Bengal based on philological and religious contents. During the colonial period, medical systems in Bengal underwent tremendous changes, and a new scientific biomedicine was introduced in Bengal. The pyrite oxidation hypothesis is one of the earliest explanations of arsenic contamination. NGO is recognized as the agents of development par excellence. Development and delivery of health care services remain severely limited by economic, logistic and human-resources constraints. The biological and anatomical explanations of arsenicosis emphasize the pathophysiological conditions which induce dysfunction in bodily systems. An ethnographic analysis of arsenicosis demonstrates how culture and ecology play a decisive role in creating a lay knowledge of public health in general and arsenicosis in particular.
