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Epidemics and Disease in India's Past
epidemicsOnline Resrouces

May 2020

Amid a worldwide pandemic of Covid-19 that has taken the lives of thousands of people, we bring some historical resources and links on how various epidemics and diseases have affected India in its past. If you know of any important links that are missing here, do let us know. Click on the links below to reach the resource:
(Photo credit: Doctor Simmonds injecting his curative serum in a plague patient, during the outbreak of bubonic plague in Karachi, India. Photo: Wellcome Collection gallery/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Plague in India
https://thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(95)90254-6.pdf

Cholera through history
https://britannica.com/science/cholera/Cholera-through-history

1903: Story of an epidemic in Kashmir
https://greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/1903-story-of-an-epidemic-in-kashmir/

Public Health in British India: A Brief Account of the History of Medical Services and Disease Prevention in Colonial India
http://medind.nic.in/iaj/t09/i1/iajt09i1p6.pdf

Smallpox Eradication in India, 1972-1977: India Engages the Pandemic
https://www.lib.umich.edu/online-exhibits/exhibits/show/smallpox-eradication-india/indian-engages-pandemic

A visual history of pandemics
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/a-visual-history-of-pandemics

Quarantine, pilgrimage, and colonial trade: India 1866-1900, Mark Harrison
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001946469202900201?journalCode=iera

Empire of the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam under British Surveillance,1865-1926, Michael Christopher Low
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1021&context=history_theses

The Black Death in Medieval India: a Historical Mystery
https://medievalists.net/2012/10/the-black-death-in-medieval-india-a-historical-mystery/

Forgotten history of Spanish Flu-the epidemic that shook Gurugram in 1918
https://hindustantimes.com/cities/forgotten-history-of-spanish-flu-the-epidemic-that-shook-gurugram-in-1918/story-igZY3NSbaJe7IxBRvTNHxH.html

How the Spanish flu of 1918 changed India
https://caravanmagazine.in/history/spanish-flu-1918-changed-india

The 1957 Pandemic of Influenza in India, IGK Menon
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/265321/PMC2537734.pdf

The Smallpox Goddess of Malabar
https://historyofvaccines.org/content/smallpox-epidemic-india
https://livemint.com/mint-lounge/features/the-cold-ones-india-s-epidemic-goddesses-11587104247592.html

Epidemics in Colonial Punjab, Sasha Tandon
https://punjab.global.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/sitefiles/journals/volume20/10-Sasha%2020.pdf

Cholera outbreak in a village in south India – Timely action saved lives
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876034112001062

Infectious Disease Outbreaks in India- Challenges and opportunities
https://sphcm.med.unsw.edu.au/infectious-diseases-blog/infectious-disease-outbreaks-india-challenges-and-opportunities

How humans have reacted to pandemics through history, A visual guide
https://theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2020/apr/29/how-humans-have-reacted-to-pandemics-through-history-a-visual-guide

Epidemiological profile of India: Historical and contemporary perspectives
https://ias.ac.in/article/fulltext/jbsc/026/04/0437-0464

Epidemics and Pandemics in India throughout History: A Review Article
https://researchgate.net/publication/336061202_Epidemics_and_Pandemics_in_India_throughout_History_A_Review_Article

The Surat Plague and its Aftermath, Godshen Robert Pallipparambil
http://montana.edu/historybug/yersiniaessays/godshen.html

Recalling history's 10 deadliest diseases that came before the coronavirus
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/recalling-historys-10-deadliest-diseases-that-came-before-the-coronavirus/articleshow/74424359.cms

Pandemics of the Past
https://indiatoday.in/india-today-insight/story/coronavirus-pandemics-of-the-past-1656730-2020-03-18

Social crisis and epidemic disease in the famines of nineteenth-century India, Arnold D (Social History Medicine)
https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11639287

Coronavirus: What India can learn from the deadly 1918 flu, Soutik Biswas
https://bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-51904019

History of Epidemics in India Since the 1900s
https://jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/history-of-epidemics-in-india-since-the-1900s-1584627562-1

The evolution of pandemic influenza: evidence from India, 1918–19, Siddharth Chandra & Eva Kassens-Noor
https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2334-14-510

Why 1918 matters in India’s corona war, Ajai Sreevatsan
https://livemint.com/news/world/why-1918-matters-in-india-s-corona-war-11584033795146.html

India's Tumultuous History of Epidemics, Religion and Public Health Policy, Kiran Kumbhar
https://thewire.in/health/india-epidemics-religion-public-health-policy

Plague: Medical History of British India
https://digital.nls.uk/indiapapers/plague.html

History of Epidemics in India since 1900
https://youtube.com/watch?v=K-B-CfSNoFc

Cholera and Colonialism in British India, David Arnold
https://jstor.org/stable/650982

A 123-year-old law, once used to imprison freedom fighters, is India’s primary weapon against coronavirus
https://qz.com/india/1820143/india-battles-coronavirus-with-british-era-epidemic-diseases-act/

Lessons from the Bubonic Plague of 1896, Monidipa Bose Dey
https://livehistoryindia.com/history-daily/2020/03/24/lessons-from-the-bubonic-plague-of-1897

This list is in progress. Please let us know if you know of some good archive on the Internet which concerns us and we may have missed. Please report if you find any dead links.

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