ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the social-intellectual environment within which an indigenous scientific discourse on birthing practices and midwifery was constructed in Bengal between the 1860s and 1900. It examines the processes through which midwifery was institutionalised and evolved into a medical discipline and an academic subject in Bengal between the 1860s and the 1930s. The book analyses the professionalisation of obstetrics in Bengal between 1900 and the 1940s. It also examines the growth of the idea of antenatal care in Bengal, roughly from 1900 till the 1940s. The book also examines such writings on antenatal care in the popular women's magazines and health journals in the early twentieth century. It outlines the preoccupation of the Bengali middle class with health and the colonial stigma of effeminacy that haunted the middle class throughout the nineteenth century.
