Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Leprosy and Empire
  • Cited by 45
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
July 2009
Print publication year:
2006
Online ISBN:
9780511497285
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511497285
Subjects:
Social and Population History, British History: General Interest, European History: General Interest, History, Regional History after 1500
Series:
Cambridge Social and Cultural Histories (8)
Information

Book description

An innovative, interdisciplinary study of why leprosy, a disease with a very low level of infection, has repeatedly provoked revulsion and fear. Rod Edmond explores, in particular, how these reactions were refashioned in the modern colonial period. Beginning as a medical history, the book broadens into an examination of how Britain and its colonies responded to the believed spread of leprosy. Across the empire this involved isolating victims of the disease in 'colonies', often on offshore islands. Discussion of the segregation of lepers is then extended to analogous examples of this practice, which, it is argued, has been an essential part of the repertoire of colonialism in the modern period. The book also examines literary representations of leprosy in Romantic, Victorian and twentieth-century writing, and concludes with a discussion of traveller-writers such as R. L. Stevenson and Graham Greene who described and fictionalised their experience of staying in a leper colony.

Reviews

'… thoughtful study … Leprosy and Empire is … able to offer some subtle but penetrating insights into the place of disease in imperial culture.'

Mark Harrison Source: Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences

‘The last few decades have seen an impressive number of books on the history of leprosy, and this is a useful addition to the genre. The ‘medical’ component of the book is excellent … The book will appeal to students of the history of medicine and to those with an interest in disease as metaphor.’

Hugo Rée Source: Health and History

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.