Histories of Health in Southeast Asia

Description

Health patterns in Southeast Asia have changed profoundly over the past century. In that period, epidemic and chronic diseases, environmental transformations, and international health institutions have created new connections within the region and the increased interdependence of Southeast Asia with China and India. In this volume leading scholars provide a new approach to the history of health in Southeast Asia. Framed by a series of synoptic pieces on the "Landscapes of Health" in Southeast Asia in 1914, 1950, and 2014 the essays interweave local, national, and regional perspectives. They range from studies of long-term processes such as changing epidemics, mortality and aging, and environmental history to detailed accounts of particular episodes: the global cholera epidemic and the hajj, the influenza epidemic of 1918, WWII, and natural disasters. The writers also examine state policy on healthcare and the influence of organizations, from NGOs such as the China Medical Board and the Rockefeller Foundation to grassroots organizations in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Introduction / Sunil Amrith and Tim Harper
Part I. The Long Duree
1. Knowledge Transition and the Transformation of Medicine in Early Modern Siam / Komatra Chuengsatiansup & Nopphanat Anuphongphat
Part II. Health and Crisis
2. Pilgrim Ships and the Frontiers of Contagion: Quarantine Regimes from Southeast Asia to the Red Sea / Eric Tagliacozzo
3. The Influenza Epidemic of 1918-19 / Kirsty Walker
4. Disaster Medicine in Southeast Asia / Greg Bankoff
Part III. Uneven Transitions
5. The Demographic History of Southeast Asia in the Twentieth Century / Peter Boomgaard
6. "Rural" Health in Modern Southeast Asia / Atsuko Naoko
7. Population Ageing and the Family: The Southeast Asian Context / Theresa W. Devasahayam
8. Epidemic Disease in Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asia / Mary Wilson
Part IV. The Politics of Health
9. The Internationalization of Health in Southeast Asia / Sunil Amrith
10. Modernising yet Marginal: Hospitals and Asylums in Southeast Asia in the 20th Century / Loh Kah Seng
11. Healing the Nation: Politics, Medicine and Analogies of Health in Southeast Asia / Rachel Leow
12. Health or Tobacco: Competing Perspectives in Modern Southeast Asia / Loh Wei Leng
13. The Role of Non-governmental Organizations in the Field of Health in Modern Southeast Asia: the Philippine Experience / Teresa S Encarnacion Tadem
Notes
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Médecine
• Médecine Générale
• Asian Studies
• Public Health
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Southeast Asia
• History of medicine
• History of Asia
• Asia

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253014955
• Langue: English

Extrait

HISTORIES OF HEALTH
IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
HISTORIES OF HEALTH IN S OUTHEAST A SIA
Perspectives on the Long Twentieth Century
Edited by Tim Harper and Sunil S. Amrith
Indiana University Press
Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931
2014 by The China Medical Board
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Histories of health in Southeast Asia : perspectives on the long twentieth century / edited by Tim Harper and Sunil S. Amrith.
p. ; cm. - (Philanthropic and nonprofit studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01486-3 (cl : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01491-7 (pb : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01495-5 (eb)
I. Harper, T. N. (Timothy Norman)- editor. II. Amrith, Sunil
S.- editor. III. Series: Philanthropic and nonprofit studies.
[DNLM: 1. History of Medicine-Asia, Southeastern.
2. History, 20th Century-Asia, Southeastern. WZ 70 JA25]
RA541.S68
362.10959 0904-dc23
2014022237
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction / Sunil S. Amrith and Tim Harper
Part I. The Longue Dur e
1 Krom Luang Wongsa and the House of Snidvongs: Knowledge Transition and the Transformation of Medicine in Early Modern Siam / Nopphanat Anuphongphat and Komatra Chuengsatiansup
Chapter Inset: A Historical Overview of Traditional Medicine in Cambodia / Sokhieng Au
Part II. Health and Crisis
2 Pilgrim Ships and the Frontiers of Contagion: Quarantine Regimes from Southeast Asia to the Red Sea / Eric Tagliacozzo
3 The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 in Southeast Asia / Kirsty Walker
4 Disaster Medicine in Southeast Asia / Greg Bankoff
Part III. Uneven Transitions
5 The Demographic History of Southeast Asia in the Twentieth Century / Peter Boomgaard
6 Rural Health in Modern Southeast Asia / Atsuko Naono
Chapter Inset: The Impact of Environmental Changes on Forest Peoples of Southeast Asia in the Twentieth Century / Alberto G. Gomes
7 Population Aging and the Family: The Southeast Asian Context / Theresa W. Devasahayam
8 Epidemic Disease in Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asia / Mary Wilson
Chapter Inset: The Eradication of Smallpox in Indonesia / Vivek Neelakantan
Part IV. The Politics of Health
9 The Internationalization of Health in Southeast Asia / Sunil S. Amrith
10 Modernizing Yet Marginal: Hospitals and Asylums in Southeast Asia in the Twentieth Century / Loh Kah Seng
11 Healing the Nation: Politics, Medicine, and Analogies of Health in Southeast Asia / Rachel Leow
12 Health or Tobacco: Competing Perspectives in Modern Southeast Asia / Loh Wei Leng
13 The Role of Non-governmental Organizations in the Field of Health in Modern Southeast Asia: The Philippine Experience / Teresa S. Encarnacion Tadem
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the China Medical Board for its generous support of this volume, which is published in connection with the CMB s hundredth anniversary. This volume owes its existence, in particular, to the vision and initiative of Dr. Lincoln Chen, who has encouraged us in this endeavor from the start. At the China Medical Board, we would also like to thank Jennifer Ryan, whose support has been vital to us throughout the process of preparing the volume for publication, and CMB board member Harvey Fineberg. Mary Wilson, who is a contributor to this volume, also participated in these early planning sessions. We are grateful to the editors of the companion volume on the history of health in China-Mary Bullock and Bridie Andrews-for many helpful conversations.
The project from which this volume arises has been based at the Joint Centre for History and Economics, which hosted the initial workshop from which the volume developed, and the Centre has supported the development of this book in countless ways since then. The editors are especially grateful to the Centre s director, Emma Rothschild, and to Inga Huld Markan, for their untiring support of our work. We would also like to thank Amy Price for her work designing and maintaining the project s website.
The discussions at the 2011 Cambridge workshop that launched this book project were greatly enriched by the participation of Seema Alavi, Komatra Chuengsatiansup, Bambang Purwanto, and Amartya Sen. A second workshop, held in Yogyakarta in July 2012, brought together most of the contributors to this volume in a discussion of draft chapters. We are deeply grateful to Professor Bambang Purwanto and to the Universitas Gajah Mada; they were most generous hosts, and they provided an atmosphere for productive conversations.
The development of the volume for publication was aided by Kirsty Walker s superb editorial work on the chapters. We are grateful, too, to Sandy Aitken for her work on the index, and to Mary-Rose Cheadle for her role in liaising with the authors and arranging copyright permissions.
Alongside the publication of this volume, a key outcome of the CMB-supported project on Transnational Histories of Health in Southeast Asia was a two-week summer school held in Cambridge in July 2013, bringing together six outstanding young scholars from Southeast Asia-Jeffrey Acaba, Vivek Neelakantan, Heong Hong Por, Ravando, Sreytouch Vong, and Patricia Wong. One of them, Vivek Neelakantan, has contributed to this volume; we are confident that the others will make their mark in the field as their projects develop. The editors learned a great deal from their work. In connection with the summer school, we are particularly grateful to Lily Chang for her energy and initiative in organizing it. Her efforts were crucial to its success. We would also like to thank Professor Loh Wei Leng (another of our contributors) for her inspiring role in making the summer school a success.
Last but not least, we would like to thank Indiana University Press for the speed and efficiency with which they have brought this book to press. The volume as a whole benefited from the detailed critical comments of the anonymous reader for the Press.
Introduction
Sunil S. Amrith and Tim Harper
In 1914, the life expectancy of an average Indonesian man was under thirty-five years. On the rubber plantations of Perak, in Malaysia, the death rate among Tamil migrant workers was over 85 per 1,000. The health of Southeast Asia s people, the distribution of its population, and the region s ecology had all been transformed by decades of tumultuous change. The map of Southeast Asia had been redrawn by imperial conquest and competition; the balance of its population has been altered by some of the largest migrations in modern history; its forest frontier was breached by new forms of commodity production. Its cities and towns were in intellectual ferment as Southeast Asia entered its age in motion. The outbreak of World War I intensified the contradictory forces that would shape the health and well-being of Southeast Asia s peoples in the twentieth century. The war catalyzed political conflicts that would last for decades: through them, the lives of millions of Southeast Asians would be affected by warfare and epidemics, mass displacement, and natural disasters. 1
Yet it also marked a threshold in the development of modern medicine and public health in the region-in connection with parallel developments in South Asia and East Asia. The China Medical Board was founded in 1914, the first in a series of initiatives to bring American-style public health education to Asia. Over the next three decades, the Rockefeller Foundation would take its experiments in public health to the Philippines and Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Dutch, French, and British colonial states embarked on the gradual expansion of their medical facilities, as did the independent kingdom of Siam-hospital treatment, medicalized childbirth, pharmaceutical advertising, and rural health centers entered the life experience of a larger-although still limited-number of people. Southeast Asian health workers and doctors emerged as key players in international debates, however unequal the terms of the discussion. And indigenous medical practitioners across the region adapted to new circumstances with ingenuity and eclecticism.
Health patterns in Southeast Asia have changed in profound respects over the past century. In 2014, Southeast Asia is a microcosm of global health. The health of its peoples has improved in dramatic ways, thanks to a combination of medical intervention, rapid economic development, political activism, and long-term demographic change. Nevertheless, widespread inequalities remain both within individual countries and across the region: inequalities in life expectancy, inequalities in access to healthcare, inequalities in treatment outcomes. Southeast Asia s ecological diversity and its rapid growth have combined to make it a hotbed of new and emerging infectious diseases, even as it suffers from an epidemic rise in non-communicable chronic disease. Natural disasters have always been a particular threat to health in Southeast Asia: there are strong indications that both their intensity and their effects have worsened in recent years, and stand to