The book investigates certain obscure but important aspects of the social history of disease and medicine in colonial eastern India, covering Assam, Bengal, and Bihar and Orissa-against the backdrop of the outbreak of a lethal disease called kala-azar, or black fever, scientifically known as visceral leishmaniasis, which spread its wings as an epidemic from the 1870s-and chisels out the interaction between the microbe behind the disease and medical interventionism on the one hand and health officials and the state on the other. The book does not narrate a simple account of disease and health. Instead, it analyses the social history of kala-azar in British east India in addition to revealing the hitherto undiscovered areas of research in the field of medical history.
