Medical History of British India

I’m delighted to announce that 146 volumes of Veterinary medicine reports are now available on the Medical History of British India website. Click the link below:

http://digital.nls.uk/indiapapers/browse/pageturner.cfm?id=75136762

to browse and search 40,000 pages for free.

The Veterinary collection covers 1864-1959, focusing on veterinary diseases, colleges and laboratories and Civil Veterinary Departments. This free to access, important material provides extensive research on animal diseases such as surra and rinderpest. Detailed reports show how veterinary medicine was used by the British colonists to control disease, maintain livestock and alleviate famine and its effect on military and local communities.

Illustrated with many photographs, maps and charts, this material will be useful to those interested in veterinary science, military medicine, animal husbandry and agriculture.

A new viewing function enables up to 30 pdf pages to be selected and then ’stitched’ together for easier reading.

The material, from the National Library’s India Papers, was microfilmed and digitised using a grant from the Wellcome Trust.

Currently our Digital Library team are working on exporting around 40,000 digital pages (146 volumes) of Veterinary medicine reports from British India c.1850-1960.

The reports cover Veterinary diseases – mainly surra and rinderpest - and the care of working animals such as camels and elephants. Horse breeding and procurement is also detailed. There are reports from Veterinary colleges and laboratories in India, with the first reports from the Bombay Veterinary College, established in 1886. The College’s website gives a good overview of its history and features people who appear in the Veterinary volumes:

http://www.mafsu.in/bvc/bvccollege/bvc.html

There are also many reports from the Civil Veterinary Department  from regions all over India. The CVD was established to control disease and improve breeding of civil stock, and the reports show the impact of the work on local communities.

Historian Chris Gill is writing a PhD dissertation based on the material and has kindly written some introductory text to it for the website.

I will then inspect the test site before these reports can be added to the main Medical History of British India website.

So watch this space for further news!

(photo is digital object number 75190959 and is from Treatise on elephants by G.H. Evans, 1901, NLS shelfmark IP/16/VB.3)