Colonial Medicine and Cholera: Historicizing Victorian Medical Debates in J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur

The present paper examines the use and description of colonial medicine for cholera and its practices in J.G. Farrell’s historical novel, The Siege of Krishnapur (1973). The paper shows that by engaging the two doctors stationed at the British residency in Krishnapur in a debate, Farrell contextualises an episode in British medical history to foreground popular medical beliefs on the aetiology of cholera and its treatment prevalent in nineteenth century Britain. The paper then argues that Farrell’s critique of an outdated medicinal theory and welcoming of the scientific future of colonial medicine simultaneously is an attempt to reinstate the position of “civilised medicine” in colonial India. It further establishes a vital link between Farrell and cholera by bringing in contemporary contexts, and discusses how cholera served as a dual tool to not only satisfy his compulsive interest in disease and doctors but also his aspirations for historical creativeness.


Introduction
The present discussion concerns the contextualisation of an episode in British medical history by James Gordon (58) because of the unequal contest between the besieged and the rebels, and the former's ultimate victory over the latter. Historian John Pemble writes, "The little band in the Residency did more than make history" (qtd. in Thorpe 180) for it truly reiterated and glamorised British strength and its extraordinary perseverance during exceptional times. The event has triggered not only the historical but also the literary imaginations. For instance, A. L. Tennyson's poem "The Defence of Lucknow" (1879) recalls the enduringness of the British against the siege through boasting, ethnocentric lines, "Handful of men as we were, we were English in heart and limb/Strong SARE, Vol. 57, Issue 2 | 2020 54 | M a u r y a a n d K u m a r with the strength, of the race to command, to obey, to endure" (46-47). G. A. Henty briefly situates the adolescent protagonists, Dick and Ned, inside the residency of Lucknow in his novel In Times of Peril (1881).
In Farrell's novel, the fictional Krishnapur residency has substituted for the Lucknow residency. The novel engages with the adventures of the British characters stationed inside the residency amidst misery, menace, conflict, horror, disease and death. The tragedy of the residency is heightened due to the outbreak of cholera, which causes many casualties, including the death of the head civil surgeon of the residency. His death offers many interesting insights into colonial understanding of and medicine for cholera, which this paper intends to discuss. Using the trope of the deadly and devastating disease cholera, Farrell, through this novel, not only intervenes into the nuances of colonial medicine but highlights the tussle within western medicine which was making its way into India, later to be canonised as "civilised medicine".
In post-colonial scholarship, "Colonial medicine" is treated as a subject of critical enquiry. "Historians have hotly debated the extent to which medicine helped in the establishment of colonial power and hegemony in India" (Saini 528). Colonial medical discourse is significant in understanding the complex issue of colonialism.
Colonial knowledge of India focuses strongly on diseases, epidemics, deaths, and the indigenous medical system. Cholera is one of the most deadly diseases that is linked with India. In colonial discourse, the native Indians were perceived as dwellers of mud, defecating in the open, living in unhygienic surroundings. At the same time, their bodies were defined as filthy, untidy, vile and prone to diseases. Uncleanliness and unsanitary living conditions are the adjectives that the British colonisers deemed fit to define the lives of their poor Indian subjects, in contrast to their own clean bodies and hygienic living conditions. In this context, the "body" of the colonised acted as a site of contestation between the coloniser and the colonised. It is through the politics and understanding of the biological body that the colonisers were successful in propagating western medicine, which was one of their hegemonic agendas. By intervening in the nuances of responses of a body suffering from a disease, the British attempted mastery over the colonised body. In this regard, David Arnold argues, "Colonialism usedor attempted to usethe body as a site for the construction of its own authority, legitimacy, and control" ( Colonising the Body 8).
The British perception of the body controls their treatment towards the bodies. By controlling the diseases, they attempted to control the body. For instance, the intervention in the body through vaccination of diseases like smallpox and cholera allowed them to demonstrate their alleged paternalistic duty towards their colonial subjects.
Later, the state-sponsored drives for cleanliness and sanitation were also an attempt to interfere in the colonised body. Advancements in medical sciences enabled the British to "pride themselves on their scientific understanding of disease causation and mocked what they saw as fatalism, superstition and barbarity of SARE, Vol. 57, Issue 2 | 2020 55 | M a u r y a a n d K u m a r indigenous responses to disease" (Arnold,Imperial Medicine 7). By successfully establishing themselves as being better at controlling diseases, the new "civilised medicine" was encouraged over the indigenous medical systems and made available in the colonies. The targets were the uppercaste elites of India who allied themselves with European education and culture. According to Kumar, "An influential section of the Indian society was thus coming under western medical influence" (167). Later through the introduction of the Indian Medical Services, colonial medicine was made available to every stratum of Indian society through Indian doctors trained in European medical practice. In this way, colonial medicine not only acted as a tool in expanding the British colonial regime but has also been used by the British to display superiority and rationality over the indigenous medical systems of India, like Ayurveda.
However, in recent scholarship, "colonial medicine" has become an important site from which to criticise the western paternal notion of excellence and hegemony. According to McCleery, in the twenty-first century "medicine in the colonies slowly began to be seen in a more critical light as a method of subjugating indigenous peoples with disruptive and often unhealthy consequences" (153). Critics such as Ramasubban (1982Ramasubban ( , 1988 and others have criticised the British colonial policies because they overlooked the medical problems arising out of the tropical diseases in India. Literary authors have also engaged in medical history and colonial medicine to subvert the paternalistic notion of western medicine. For instance, Amitav Ghosh has overtly presented the inharmonious relationship between colonial and indigenous medical practices in his novel The Calcutta Chromosome (1995). We see that Mangala in the novel has her folk understanding of malaria, which is contrary to the colonial treatment of malaria. Her medical practice is intertwined with religion, and hence, diseases are associated with deities. On the contrary, the colonial medical method relies on practicality and rebuffs any religious interference.
During the early and mid-nineteenth century, Britain witnessed rapid societal changes. Morrell notes, "Crucial changes in both British science and British society took place then and there about" (184). A shift in the content of medical ideas (Rosenberg 678) is also visible at the same time. The prevalent miasma theory of disease 4 underwent critical scrutiny in the scientific and medical community. However, it persisted for a few more decades until a "relationship between a causative microbe and a disease" (Karamanou et al. 61) was established. This early phase of the germ theory of disease, which acts as a rebuttal of miasma theory, holds a central place in Farrell's novel and is key to the discussion of cholera (believed to be caused by miasma). Among the novels in the trilogy, it is the most "medically crowded" novel, crammed with instances of health problems, disease, medicine, and death. Critics like Crane and Livett (1997) and McLeod (2007) suggest Farrell's biographical account as the backdrop of his obsession with disease and medicine in his novels. This is partly true as Farrell had a medical SARE, Vol. 57, Issue 2 | 2020 56 | M a u r y a a n d K u m a r history, which was an essential phase in his life. He was afflicted by polio and remained uncured till his death.
However, his preoccupation with cholera, in particular, as the paper will argue, is an outcome of an altogether different experience. Unlike Ghosh, Farrell is more interested in the clash over medicine within one group, i.e., the colonisers. He potentially historicises the medical debates about the aetiology of cholera and its treatment, and critiques the fractured medical practices of those times.
In the present paper, it is argued that Farrell's critique of an outdated medical theory and welcoming of the scientific future of British medicine simultaneously is an attempt to reinstate the position of "civilised medicine" in colonial India. We further establish a vital link between Farrell and cholera by bringing in the contemporary cultural context, and discuss how cholera served as a dual tool to not only satisfy his obsession with disease and doctors but also his aspirations for historical creativeness, which he sought by writing historical fiction about the British Empire.

Cholera, Company and India
When East India Company surgeons began in the eighteenth century to practice their craft among the troops and traders in South Asia, they encountered new diseases, some of which affected delicate Europeans differently from localsthough that was hard to gauge, since their practice among these others was occasional and unrepresentative . . . it was assumed that the place modified bodily processes. (Hamlin 35) The East India Company met with a slew of challenges when it established its position in India. The country was not only a place of great fortune but also equally a place of "constant hardship and deadly risk" (Goodman,"Unpalatable Truths" 205). New diseases and the tropical Indian climate were of utmost concern to the British. James Beattie observes, "[T]he British were becoming increasingly pessimistic of ever being able to successfully acclimatise to India" (90). They considered the climate of India detrimental to their health and responsible for the new diseases, such as cholera. E. M. Collingham considers the experiences of British folk in India as "intensely physical" not only because of the climatic contrast between the two countries but also due to the "ever-present specter of illness and death" (qtd. in Goodman, "Unpalatable Truths" 206).
Cholera, a tropical disease, was the most prominent among the deadly trinity 5 of diseases which defines the history of epidemic diseases in nineteenth-century colonial India (Arnold, Colonising the Body 10). It is not possible to pinpoint the exact place of origin of cholera, but according to the widespread belief, its earliest traces have been found in India. According to Pollitzer, "Bengal, in India has been the cradle, if not the original home of cholera" (427). David Arnold writes about its beginning that it "spread beyond its 'home' in deltaic Bengal to cover much of the subcontinent, and from India to much of Asia and Europe in the course of the next 15 years" (qtd. in Harrison,Public Health,chapt. 4). He considers cholera, "too potent a factor in the viability and profitability of empire for the Company" (Colonising the Body 27) as it not only annihilated substantial British and local population in India but also had a negative impact on the Company's revenue.
Cholera produced "widespread panic, prompting measures to manage not only the disease itself but also the volatilities of the panic-stricken population" (Almeida 57). To quote, Lester, the panic of cholera was "woven into the fabric of everyday life for colonisers or the Company's men" (235; my italics). The Company faced massive loss of lives among its army personnel and civilians in India due to cholera. MacLeod and Lewis comment, "Cholera took far more lives of British soldiers in India than did the battles themselves" (44). As it was a tropical disease, and new to the British, its cure was unavailable in colonial medicine. As Pamela Gilbert notes, for many years, cholera "as a medical category, was far from clear and unified" (qtd. in Almeida 58). The mortality rate due to cholera was also very alarming. According to Wakimura, this tropical disease "killed about 15 million people from 1817 to 1865" (2)(3). This figure underlines the devastating nature of cholera, which was more than enough to send the nineteenth-century public into frenzy. It also reemphasises the need for a strong focus on cholera in the medical debate of the time.
Colonial development projects like means of transportation (Railways and Ships) had contributed significantly in spreading cholera within as well as outside India. The presence of Mr Worseley and Mr Ford, the railway engineers, in the novel signifies the presence of a railway project in Krishnapur. The railway in India, brought by the British, not only increased the mobility of people from one location to another but also the mobility of contagious diseases. The Company troops, mercantile goods, labourers, and slaves travelled extensively through the railway and also carried the diseases from one place to another sporadically. The port cities developed by the British for commercial ventures were also very crucial in the propagation of cholera. Cities like Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, etc. have functioned as a "disease entrepot". They were the "point of departure as well as point of entry for the pathogens" (Arnold, Colonising the Body 10). Calcutta, where the high command office of the Company was situated, features prominently in the novel. The arrival and departure of the British from homeland to colony and vice versa is a routine in the novel. Public movements, maritime trades, military commutes and overseas labour transactions all enhanced the possibility of diseases becoming epidemics. These movements have played an essential role in the transoceanic exchanges of epidemic diseases like cholera (Arnold, Colonising the Body 10). These ambitious projects like railway, meant chiefly to increase and tighten the colonial grip by SARE, Vol. 57, Issue 2 | 2020 58 | M a u r y a a n d K u m a r intervening into every remote part of India through a colonial railway nexus, offered the British not only access to the fortunes of India but also to its diseases, which were unknown to British medical science.

It was only when cholera reached Britain and other parts of the world that it attracted the attention of
Epidemiologists and medical practitioners. According to Platizky, cholera in Britain was a "shock disease" that catalysed phobic reactions (533). Mushtaq makes a pertinent remark that cholera prevailed in India long before but "[g]ained the focus of medical services due to its serious impact on the troops and officers of the Company; otherwise, it was a disease of poor people" (10). Some temporary measures were taken to stop cholera, however, "lack of scientific understanding of how the disease spread, the poorly developed public health systems and, perhaps most importantly, prevailing social attitudes and complacency towards the conditions of poor and vulnerable populations allowed cholera to return time and again" (Lee 8). There was contention for a long time on how cholera spreads. It continued to fascinate contemporary medical experts and scientists till the late nineteenth century, but nothing except a "vague awareness of the problem of 'tropical disease' and isolated attempts to overcome it" (Harrison, "Tropical Medicine" 317) emerged.

Cholera; causes and treatment: The Victorian Medical Debate
The British East India Company had employed European-trained surgeons to serve the staff of the Company. Initially, the scope of the surgeons' work was limited to looking after military personnel, but later on, it also covered civilian medical requirements. In Farrell's novel Dr Dunstaple, the civil surgeon, and Dr McNab, the junior regimental surgeon, shoulder the responsibility of the medical needs of Krishnapur residency. Being a senior and head civil surgeon, Dunstaple has some hold in the residency as well as in Krishnapur. He had long been looking after the health of the British community in Krishnapur, from prescribing medicines for ailments to attending childbirths. Young MacNab, on the other hand, is new to Krishnapur; he is Dunstaple's deputy and takes charge in his absence. The two doctors represent two different schools of medicine of the 1850s. Dunstaple is a practitioner of a school of medicine which heavily relies on "miasma theory" of diseases, while young McNab belongs to the school of medicine which believes in the "germ theory" of diseases. The germ theory of disease, however, was in its initial stages and thus did not have much acceptance. This contrast in medical beliefs causes a tussle between the two on the issue of cholera, as the two popular assumptions about cholera during that time were, it is either airborne (based on "miasma theory") or water-borne (based on "germ theory").
In the midst of the year 1857, the uprising of the Indians posed a threat to the lives of the British people across India. Taking cognisance of the deteriorating law and order situation in Krishnapur, the Collector, Mr Hopkins, orders the provision of shelter to every European and loyal native inside the residency to ensure their SARE, Vol. 57, Issue 2 | 2020 59 | M a u r y a a n d K u m a r safety and well being. The accommodation of the British, Eurasians and few loyal natives inside the residency causes congestion. The residency eventually turns into a battlefield where the rebels and the besieged fight against each other for the next few months. The ongoing war between the rebellious native soldiers and the Company's soldiers to save the residency causes death every day. On Collector's command, the bodies of the non-British people are dumped outside the back boundary wall of the residency where they pile up, rotten and decaying. The British attitude towards the dead bodies of the colonised is pathetic irrespective of religion. In Hindu and Sikh traditions, the physical body contains the soul (the Atman), which is to be respected and therefore should, after death, be cremated upon a pyre; in Islam, the priest buries the dead body while offering prayers. The act of dumping the dead soldiers and civilians of different faiths without giving them proper burial shows the disrespect of the British authority towards the bodies of the colonised. The treatment of the British dead is completely different; whether Catholic or Protestant, they are cremated observing every appropriate rite, inside the residency campus.
During the monsoon season, rain heightens the foul smell of the decaying bodies. Eventually, one of the residents is diagnosed with cholera. Dunstaple is duty-bound to provide medical care to his patients and to save them from cholera. Unfortunately, he looks at them with what Foucault terms the "medical gaze". The bodies of the patients become objects of analysis when they come under his observation, leading towards greater power for himself. The medical gaze, Foucault argues, allows the doctor to penetrate the body of a patient to dig out the hidden truth, which only he can understand. This gaze subsequently provides him with the medical knowledge to ascertain any disease. He believes himself to be the only cholera expert and uses a medication system which he considers the "best treatment known to medical science" and which "every physician worthy of the name accorded his cholera patients" (Farrell,Siege 165). He is the doctor who is "doctor-oriented and not patient-oriented" (Misselbrook 312), and his knowledge of medicine provides him with the abusive power to treat his patients the way he wants. Dunstaple supersedes McNab as an authority, not only because he is senior and more experienced but also because he has been serving the Company's personnel, without any complaints. Added to that, he is in a profession which was revered during the nineteenth century. As Christopher Lawrence writes, "In accord with He emerges as a threat to Dunstaple's career in Krishnapur as he is a modern physician who is "known to be in favour of some of the most alarmingly direct methods known to civilised medicine" (Farrell,Siege 20). Unlike Dunstaple, he believes in continual observation of a patient to derive general principles regarding the mechanism of the human body. He takes note of every single development in the course of treatment of his patients and holds a more rational and scientific attitude towards physiology and diseases. David Arnold observes that colonial medicine "self-consciously conceived of itself as a science, based on careful local observation" and therefore, almost all-medical treatises of that period declare that their basis is clinical observation (Colonising the Body 18).
McNab's habit of careful observation imparts his rational and scientific attitude towards the disease. Also, the paradigmatic shift brought into medical studies by the recent bacteriological research and findings shook the previous system of medicines. Not only did the indigenous system of medicine appear to be outworn but also the Farrell historicises the Victorian medical debates regarding cholera. By having the doctors engage in a dialogue, he brings forth the tension within the so-called "civilised medicine" of Britaina practice which acts as a tool of subjugation 6 in the colonies during later years. Dunstaple believes that it is the "bad air" of the decaying dead bodies which has brought cholera. However, McNab possesses a very different opinion on cholera.
The strife between the two doctors on the cause and treatment of cholera unpacks itself one day after the evening service is over. Dunstaple, who has been smouldering for many days, takes the opportunity of this public gathering to confront McNab, deliberately.
Use of "dialogue" as a literary form has a long history. Cunnington considers it as the "vehicle of sound [L]adies and gentleman, you should know that Dr McNab holds the discredited belief that you catch cholera by drinking . . . more precisely, that in cholera the morbific matter is taken into the alimentary canal causing diarrhea, that the poison is at the same time reproduced in the intestines and passes out with the discharges, and that by these so-called "rice water" discharges becoming mingled with the drinking water of others the disease is communicated from one person to another continually multiplying itself as it goes. (Farrell,Siege 252) After setting up a kind of preface to McNab's views on cholera, Dunstaple lays out his own understanding of cholera in front of the public. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the miasma theory was a predominant and accepted theory of diseases in Britain. The absence of any scientific inquiry and scholarship added credibility to this theory. The majority of medical practitioners, doctors and physicians of those times held an unshakable belief in it. The same belief guides Dunstaple. The foul smell coming from the dead bodies heaped behind the residency, acts as the base of his arguments. He emphasises that "miasma" or "bad air" causes it rather than the intake of any contaminated water. In "The Defence of Lucknow", Tennyson shows similar support to miasma theory through the lines, "Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English field/Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that would not be healed" (83-84).
Unwilling to yield and not ready to leave any ambiguities regarding his claims, Dunstaple goes on to describe the pathology of cholera as well as what according to him is to be done once cholera is diagnosed in a patient. The following quote, replete with descriptions of physiology as well as medical terms, fascinates the readers. It also asserts Farrell's own medical knowledge, which he developed during his engagement with doctors for a long period 7 . Dunstaple says: When you inhale the poison of cholera it kills or impairs the functions of the ganglionic nerves which line the air-cells of the lungs . . . hence, the vital chemistry of the lungs is suspended; neither caloric nor vital electricity is evolved . . . hence, the coldness which is so typical of cholera. The blood continues to be black and carbonated . . . the treacly aspect of the blood in cholera is well known . . . and in due course, the heart becomes asphyxiated . . . We must think of restoring the animal heat which has been lost and we must consider means of counter irritating the disease . . . Hence, a warm bath, perhaps, and a blister to the spine. To relieve the pains in the head we might order leeches to the temples. An accepted method of counter-irritation in cholera is with sinapisms applied to epigastrium. (Farrell,Siege 254) SARE, Vol. 57, Issue 2 | 2020 62 | M a u r y a a n d K u m a r For medicine, he prescribes, "brandy to support the system and pills composed of calomel, half a grain, opium and capsicum, of each one-eighth of a grain" (Farrell,Siege 254). During those times, medical practitioners used brandy, calomel, and opium for treating cholera patients. These medicines, commonly believed to cure cholera, were however, ineffective. Lack of scientific understanding of the cause and treatment of cholera enabled the colonial physicians of those times to practice this kind of medicine. Mrs R.C. Germon, who witnessed the siege personally at Lucknow residency, also mentions in her diary that opium and poultices were used in treating cholera patients. This emphasises the fact that the colonial medical understanding of diseases was not always rational.
Dunstaple too practices these popular cholera treatment medicines unsuspectingly. His character aligns with the famous Victorian surgeon, later Physician Extraordinary to King Edward VII, Dr Jospeh Fayrer, who worked at the Lucknow residency during the siege. Dr Fayrer believed in the miasma theory and opined that cholera is caused by bad air. In his lifetime he never accepted the idea that germs cause cholera. By recreating his persona through Dunstaple, Farrell critiques the colonial medical authority and its understanding of disease and medicine.
Sam Goodman pertinently remarks that by using such period materials, Farrell is challenging the "authority of medical and colonial history" of Britain ("Beneficial Disease" 142). By historical re-imagination Farrell foregrounds the gaps in the colonial medical system. The idea that the health of the Indians, as well as the British In the greater number of epidemic diseases, the morbid poison appears to enter the blood in some way, and after multiplying during a period of so-called incubation, it affects the whole system. Such is undoubtedly the case in smallpox, measles, scarlet fever and the various kinds of continued fever . . . Cholera, on the other hand, begins with an effusion of fluid into the alimentary canal, without any previous illness whatsoever. Indeed, after this fluid has begun to flow as a copious diarrhoea the patient often feels so little indisposed that he cannot persuade himself that anything serious is the matter. (Farrell,Siege 255) MacNab is particular about its symptoms and knows what to do in such a situation when a patient's health deteriorates rapidly. He further says, If you analyse the blood of someone with cholera, you'll find that the watery fluid Gazette. After 1857, significant measures were taken to check the supply of contaminated water. The companies filtered the faecal contaminated water before supply and used sources which were away from tidal reach of the Thames. In this regard, Davenport et al. note, "it seems very likely that these measures helped to prevent major outbreaks of water-borne diseases, except in the cholera epidemic of 1866, when regulations were breached" (408). However, Snow's claims went unrecognised for two decades.
McNab echoes Dr Snow's views on germ theory and cholera when he refutes Dunstaple's claims categorically by logical explanations. According to Binns, "The clash between the two doctors regarding the cause and proper treatment of cholera is a paradigm of the battle between the best and worst elements of the Victorian mind" (70-71). The verbal duel between the doctors ends when Dunstaple kills himself. He drinks the rice-water fluid from a cholera patient to prove his claims, and consequently catches cholera and dies. Brandy and opium, the medicines he believes in, do not work to cure him. His death symbolises two things. First, it is an end to unproven medical treatments of cholera, and debunks miasma theory. Second, it hails the inception of an advanced era of medical science. Razzell aptly notes, "Although, people like Snow and Budd were groping toward an understanding of the nature and origins of diseases like cholera and typhoid, a clear understanding of the process of infection had to wait, of course, until the development of scientific bacteriology at the end of the nineteenth century" (1053).

Farrell meticulously sets up McNab as an emerging threat to Dunstaple's position as well as popularity in
Krishnapur to illustrate the ambiguity and limitations of colonial medicine. To do this, he has tried to portray cholera and the medical debate "[a]s authentic and as period-specific as possible" (Goodman,"Beneficial Disease" 144). The prevalence of miasma theory and a senior doctor favouring it clearly indicates the irrational colonial perception of diseases like cholera. It suggests the lack of scientific rigour in the early Victorian medical sciences. While the British termed the India system of medicine as superstitious as we see in the novel that the Government in Calcutta regards the circulation of chapati inside the residency, which was a foretoken for an upcoming revolt, as a superstitious attempt by the Indians to avert the cholera epidemic, it is clear that their own medical understanding of diseases like cholera was unscientific. However, the forthcoming developments and changes in medical science with the advent of bacteriology were crucial in Britain's later imperial exercises. The scientific medical practices and medicines were later promoted in India for financial benefits, while simultaneously functioning as a tool in legitimating British rule in India. David Arnold rightly says, "By 1900 'topical medicine' had become vital to attempts not only to give legitimacy to Empire but also to realise its economic potential and profitability" ("Indian Ocean" 19).
Farrell's resurrection of McNab with "decades of medical experience, attempting to protect bodies from the fatal attack of disease" (McLeod 75) in his uncompleted last novel, The Hill Station (1981) set in late nineteenthcentury India, corroborates the proliferation of colonial medicine in India. McNab, whose "counter-arguments fail to convince the garrison of Krishnapur" (Goodman,"Beneficial Disease" 148) is at the end considered as the best of all by the Collector, for he was "the only one who knew what he was doing" (Farrell,Siege 312). He emerges as a medical hero in The Hill Station, as he is making observations for a treatise on Indian Medicine.
Treatises of such kind 9 have helped in the institutionalisation of western science and medicine in India. These treatises by European scholars have represented native healing and medical practices as superstitious, irrational, and unscientific 10 . In this regard, Mishra and Kumar opine that such representations were meant to "deliberately eliminate the possibilities of the role and significance of the local cultural practices of the treatment" (79).

Cholera, Farrell and context: An indispensable linkage
This section focuses on the context that situates a link between Farrell and his preoccupation with disease in general and cholera in particular. Neo-historicist critics, such as Stephen Greenblatt and Catherine Gallagher argue that every text is the product of a cultural context (7), i.e. " [N]o text appears in the world simply through the efforts of a single person, and no text is entirely disconnected from the world in which it makes its appearance" (Robson 68). In the light of this point, the discussion shows how cultural contexts, past as well as contemporary, provide a forum for Farrell's interest in the theme of the declining state of Empire, which can be clearly portrayed through an examination of the fractured medical system. The lack of cleanliness, which is not so injurious in the country, where population is scattered, and which is the Irishman's second nature, becomes terrifying and gravely dangerous through its concentration here (Liverpool). The Milesian (Irish) deposits all garbage and filth before his house door here, as he was accustomed to do at home, and so accumulates the pools and dirt-heaps which disfigure the working-people's quarters and poison the air. He builds a pig-sty against the house wall as he did at home, and if he is prevented from doing this, he lets the pig sleep in the room with himself. (81) This wave of immigration, estimated by Waller (1981) to be around half a million people during the first half of the nineteenth century, was crucial in spreading the cholera epidemic. Lack of cleanliness, inadequate supply of clean water, improper disposal of sewage and absence of personal hygiene among the people in Liverpool escalated the epidemic. A disturbance, famously known as the "cholera riots of Liverpool" followed the outbreak, which led to a clash between medical professionals and the public, and attacks at dispensaries and hospitals. The British Parliament passed a "Cholera Morbus Prevention Act" to ensure strict cleanliness and hygiene in the state during that time. Nevertheless, Liverpool again suffered significant cholera outbreaks at least three more times, in 1848, 1853 and 1861. The devastation caused by cholera in terms of human death was particularly high in Liverpool, as compared to all other cholera cases that occurred in Britain until 1855. According to Underwood, SARE, Vol. 57, Issue 2 | 2020 66 | M a u r y a a n d K u m a r in the epidemic of 1832, the number of deaths was 1,523, in the outbreak of 1848-49, the number of deaths was 5,308, and  Yesterday there were loud whispers through the town of the cholera having arrived in Liverpool . . . The case in Bachelor-street was that of a young man named Murphy.
He had been drinking hard, we understand, the preceding night, and though unwell yesterday morning he went out to his work. He was soon, however, compelled to return, and was seized with spasms; purging and vomiting ensued, and he died yesterday at seven o'clock. (482) The symptoms of cholera include persistent spasms and vomiting. In the novel, Dr McNab has recorded similar symptoms in his wife, who died of cholera. He records "She has persistent cramps and vomits constantly a thin, gruel-like fluid without odour" (Siege 166) which parallels the actual cholera case of Liverpool. All these similarities are signposts that connect the dots between Liverpool and Farrell's fictional residency.
Another connection between cholera and Farrell comes from French author Albert Camus. By the time  1832, 1849, and 1866 (1962) are some of the remarkable studies that prominently feature cholera epidemics. During the same time, "medical humanities" emerged as an interdisciplinary field of study, and programs on medical humanities were started in medical schools (Brody 1). Paul Ramsey's influential text on medical humanities, The Patient as a Person, appeared in 1970. According to Sam Goodman, "Farrell's literary critique of Empire corresponds with the contextual emergence of the medical humanities" ("Beneficial Disease" 145). Farrell's recreation of a historical medical discourse with fictional characters sets the novel as a fine example of this discipline, which attempts to further the understanding of medical science through literature. According to Carson, the discipline developed when "authority and expertise were being questioned, and traditional ways of doing things were being challenged" (322). Farrell's novel gives his reader a glimpse of such a situation, where the expertise and authority of a senior doctor in the treatment of cholera is questioned and challenged by a junior doctor. The novel, loaded with medical cases lets its readers visualise the subjective experiences of patients, which not only provides them with the knowledge of how disease adversely affects the lives of the patients as well of their caretakers, but also enables readers to empathise with such patients in real life. For instance, the condition of the ailing Collector is mentioned as follows: SARE, Vol. 57, Issue 2 | 2020 68 | M a u r y a a n d K u m a r The illness had aged him. He lay still for hour after hour, naked beneath a sheet because of the heat and humidity, the mosquito net cast aside for air, too exhausted even to lift an arm to drive away the mosquitoes which constantly settled on his face.
Miriam or one of the older children of the garrison who could no longer play outside since the shrinking of the perimeter sat constantly at his bedside to fan him and to defend him against the mosquitoes. He said nothing. He seemed too exhausted even to speak or move his eyes. (Farrell,Siege 226) Miriam is horrified to see her father's deteriorating medical condition, later. Farrell writes, "Miriam knew that people can die of erysipelas and when she saw what a state the Collector was in, rolling on the floor in delirium, his face red and swollen, she received an unpleasant shock" (Siege 218). This entire cultural context suggests Farrell's motivation for writing about cholera.
One of the five fundamental assumptions about New Historicism suggested by H. A. Veeser is that a text is always "embedded in a network of material practices". Further, the "literary and non-literary texts circulate inseparably" (Veeser 2). Publication of this novel in 1973 interacts with other contemporary cultural developments. The context establishes an interface between Farrell and Cholera. In one of his interviews, Farrell remarked, "It seemed to me that the really interesting thing that's happened during my lifetime has been the decline of the British Empire" (qtd. in Binns 16). Therefore, when Farrell decided to write about the declining empire, setting his story in 1857, there could not have been a more appropriate subject than cholera to serve many of his purposes. "[C]holera violated imperial expectations, countered enlightened ideals of progress, and challenged scientific rationality" (Almeida 60). According to Binns, medical debates on cholera are one of the significant "moments in history which involved blows to imperial self-esteem and a loss of cultural selfconfidence" (Binns 17). Thus, by contextualising cholera in a historical episode, Farrell uses it as a tool to excavate Victorian medical debates on cholera.

Conclusion
Varied opinions on the root cause of cholera and its treatment are visible in the early nineteenth century, due to a lack of empirical evidence. This paper has discussed how Farrell has historicised the whole medical debate through the strife between the two doctors stationed at Residency. Although as Greacen remarks he was "well equipped to write about the spread of potentially fatal disease" (381), it is surprising as well as of merit to appreciate the way Farrell describes the minute details of cholera and its victims in the novel, as if he were a doctor by profession or had some training in medical practice. The article then has argued how Farrell's critique of an outdated medical theory and simultaneous welcoming of the scientific future of British medicine is an attempt to reinstate the position of "civilised medicine" in colonial India; it is presented as more scientific and empirical, hence, superior to native medical practices. The resurrection of McNab, in his posthumous novel, is a testimony to this. Farrell is very much a product of his age. The 1960s context shapes his consciousness and creativeness, and that gets reflected in his novel. The paper has unravelled a relationship between Farrell and cholera and has shown how cholera is part and parcel of his thought process when his biographical account and the contemporary context are placed side by side.