The hookworm epidemic on the plantations in colonial Sri Lanka.

The history of disease and health in colonial Sri Lanka has been largely ignored. Historians of colonial economic and social policies in that country have produced a deluge of materials without mentioning the impact of colonial labour policy on the health of the indigenous people.' Meanwhile, even those who have written on the history of medicine in Sri Lanka have not fully accounted for colonial labour practices that had a significant impact on health.2 This conspicuous neglect by both medical and social historians has contributed to the prevailing notion that the medicine brought by European colonial forces saved the lives of millions of people in the colonies.3 Instead, medicine and medical services were introduced to the colonies for the self-interested concerns of the colonizers themselves, and were "constrained ideologically, financially and politically from broader and more effective involvement in the health of the population".4 An integrated study of the history of disease and health in colonial Sri Lanka must examine the implications of economic policies for the health of the indigenous people. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, I will examine how British colonial labour policy in Sri Lanka resulted in an epidemic of hookworm disease on the plantations and in neighbouring villages. It is argued that the laissez-faire policy of the colonial government enabled the planters to ignore basic requirements such as the water supply and latrines for the workers in favour of their own economic goals. Second, I will discuss the involvement of Rockefeller