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This book focuses on the Ranchi Indian Mental Hospital, the largest public psychiatric facility in colonial India during the 1920s and 1930s. It breaks new ground by offering unique material for a critical engagement with the phenomenon of the ‘indigenisation’ or ‘Indianisation’ of the colonial medical services and the significance of international professional networks. The work also provides a detailed assessment of the role of gender and race in this field, and of Western and culturally specific medical treatments and diagnoses. The volume offers an unprecedented look at both the local and global factors that had a strong bearing on hospital management and psychiatric treatment at this institution.
‘Waltraud Ernst offers us a major new contribution [and] by far the most detailed and insightful account of a mental hospital for Indians produced to date. […] [Ernst is] a leading light in this field.’ —Christopher Harding, ‘Social History of Medicine’
Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Tables and Figures; Introduction; Chapter 1: Indianisation and its Discontents; Chapter 2: The Patients: The Demographics of Gender and Age, Locality, Occupation, Caste and Religion; Chapter 3: Institutional Trends and Standardisation: Deaths, Diseases and Cures; Chapter 4: Classifications, Types of Disorder and Aetiology; Chapter 5: Treatments; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index