ABSTRACT
In the light of the debate on British medical intervention to control epidemic diseases in India, this chapter explains India’s experience and experiments on the outbreak of the kala-azar epidemic during colonial rule. Kala-azar became a global disease, but Indian ‘backwardness’ was blamed for it. It was found to be prevalent in eastern India after European commercial and political penetration in the nineteenth century, and the creation of colonial infrastructure. British medical intervention against kala-azar succeeded after 1920 with the introduction of antimony treatment in the form of tartar emetic. Subsequently, some more efficacious drugs like urea stibamine, neostibosan and others to tackle it more effectively were found and used by the doctors. The government made the treatment compulsory under the revised kala-azar regulations in 1920 framed under the Epidemic Diseases Act. But the disease was far from under control. Anti-kala-azar measures, both preventive and curative, seemed to have not been effectively implemented in all the affected places. The preventive measures were not well organized and curative measures were very limited. The government might possibly have faced certain constraints, geographical, technological or social, to bring all the sufferers, particularly in the remote villages, under treatment. But deficiencies in the medical policy of the government cannot be overlooked. The anti-kala-azar measures were not liberally funded by the government. Improved sanitation, as was suggested by Leonard Rogers, could be a remedy for kala-azar. But improvement in this field was very meagre.
