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Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World

Medicine, Material Culture and Trade, 1600-2000

Dr Anne Gerritsen editor Burton Cleetus editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:9th Feb '23

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World cover

A collection that explores the role of materiality in the way health and medical commodities were understood and engaged with by communities across the Indian Ocean World.

Introducing materiality into the study of the history of medicine, this volume hones in on communities across the Indian Ocean World and explores how they understood and engaged with health and medical commodities. Opening up spatial dimensions and challenging existing approaches to knowledge, power and the market, it defines ‘therapeutic commodity’ and explores how different materials were understood and engaged with in various settings and for a number of purposes.

Offering new spatial realms within which the circulation of commodities created new regimes of meaning, Histories of Health and Materiality in the Indian Ocean World demonstrates how medicinal substances have had immediate and far-reaching economic and political consequences in various capacities. From midwifery and umbilical cords, to the social spaces of soap, perfumes in early modern India and remedies for leprosy, this volume considers a vast range of material culture in medicinal settings to better understand the history of medicine and its role in global connections since the early 17th century.

Gerritsen and Cleetus’ volume provides an excellent and wide-ranging contribution to the material history of medicine, showcasing the diverse uses and meanings that medicinal objects adopted as they travelled to, and from, the Indian Ocean World.

* Elise Smith, Assistant Professor in the History of Medicine, University of Warwick,

ISBN: 9781350195882

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

320 pages