Throughout the 18th century, members of the British East India Company reported their discoveries of native scientific and technological practices to the Royal Society. Here, listing out some of those discoveries (in their own words). 1/5
Issac Pyke, governor of St. Helena, writes on the manufacturing of mortar in Madras that forms a “stucco-work” surpassing any known European composition, particularly “Plaster of Paris...in smoothness and beauty” and it is as durable as “marble”. 2/5
Robert Coult, a doctor in Calcutta, describes a method of smallpox inoculation practiced by Bengali Brahmins at least a century before Lady Mary Wortley Montague pleaded with British doctors to adopt this practice (and almost two centuries before Edward Jenner). 3/5
Likewise, Robert Baker begs the “permission to present to the Royal Society a method to manufacturing ice that was performed at Allahabad, Mootegil, and Calcutta.” This methodology, as Baker argued in the letter, “would make permanent colonial settlements a reality”. 4/5
Helenus Scott, another doctor stationed in Bombay, writes to Joseph Banks of the Royal society that he would include in the next bill of lading a sample of caute, a surgical cement that putatively reattaches severed limbs. 5/5
~ From The Alchemy of Empire by Rajani Sudan
~ From The Alchemy of Empire by Rajani Sudan
"A mysterious sect of Brahmans wandering up and down the Gangetic plain to popularize the practice of tika, which involved taking matter from a smallpox patient’s pustule and applying it to the pricked skin of an uninfected person".
newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…
newyorker.com/magazine/2020/…
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