Nandini Bhattacharya, <i>Disparate Remedies: Making Medicines in Modern India</i> Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023. Pp. 272. ISBN 978-0-2280-1753-0. CA$47.95 (paperback).
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Nandini Bhattacharya meticulously examines the intricate dynamics of medical pluralism, power structures and socio-economic variables in shaping India's pharmacological landscape in the colonial and postcolonial eras.She explores the evolution of medicines and their burgeoning consumer markets by highlighting interactions among governmental actions, public discourse and scientific dynamism related to medicinal remedies during the colonial period.By navigating interactions among diverse medical systems, crosscultural knowledge exchange and market dynamicsmechanisms by which therapeutic products became integral to public lifethe book critically analyses how colonial initiatives have affected pharmaceutical production and consumption in postcolonial India, emphasizing the lasting impact of historical influences on the contemporary pharmaceutical realm.The intricate relationship between indigenous and 'bazaar' pharmaceutical firms defines Bhattacharya's perception of the colonial pharmaceutical industry's complexity.Shedding light on the connections among multinational corporations, indigenous enterprises and local traders, she illuminates pragmatic realities of competition and adaptive strategies within the medical market in colonial India.She effectively challenges simplistic narratives of isolationism motivated by nationalism, exposing structural similarities and competitive strategies among diverse pharmaceutical entities.She also examines the complex interplay among hybridity, heterogeneity and cosmopolitanism in the pharmaceutical environment, challenges the dichotomy between indigenous and Western medicine, and contends that rather than being mutually exclusive, these classifications coalesced and mutually influenced each other, blurring traditional boundaries between various medicinal practices.Bhattacharya addresses discourses surrounding the inclusion of indigenous medicines in colonial pharmaceutical practices, revealing negotiations over 'indigeneity' in the medical market and challenging established definitions of indigenous medicine as compared to Western standards.By contextualizing the codification of indigenous drugs within orientalist projects, Bhattacharya underscores the tensions between colonial governance, scientific rationality and indigenous knowledge systems.Her exploration reveals how colonial policies perpetuated dependence on costly imports from British manufacturers, influenced by the lucrative contracts of UK-based firms.This further accentuates various medical traditions' coexistence and mutual influence within the colonial pharmaceutical landscape.The study also delves into the relationship between pharmaceutical adulteration and societal factors such as caste, personal identity and nationalist discourse,
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.052 | 0.041 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".