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Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History

Edmond, Roderick S. (2006) Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History. Cambridge University Press, 255 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-86584-5. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:8001)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.

Abstract

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... More 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.

Item Type: Book
Subjects: P Language and Literature
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of English
Depositing User: Alison Priest
Date Deposited: 30 Oct 2008 16:02 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 09:45 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/8001 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Edmond, Roderick S..

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