Communicable Diseases and Germ Theory in Colonial India – an Assessment*

The transition from miasma to germ theory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has been widely documented in narratives about the discovery of microbes, the evidence of contamination, or the procedures for sterilizations. This was a radical change in the history of understanding disease, treating and preventing it, and that shift marked a new era in medicine. However, it is important to find out how did that shift happen, what was it actually like to live through the transition while dealing with the disease, contagion, infection, transmission, treatment or prevention? This project was aimed to investigate the establishment of germ theory as the central paradigm in tropical medicine and the impact of germ theory on the indigenous physicians in colonial India. The study consists of the five following chapters: