The emergence of global history has been one of the more notable features of academic history over the past three decades. Although historians of disease were among the pioneers of one of its earlier incarnations—world history—the recent “global turn” has made relatively little impact on histories of health, disease, and medicine. Most continue to be framed by familiar entities such as the colony or nation-state or are confined to particular medical “traditions.” This article aims to show what can be gained from taking a broader perspective. Its purpose is not to replace other ways of seeing or to write a new “grand narrative” but to show how transnational and transimperial approaches are vital to understanding some of the key issues with which historians of health, disease, and medicine are concerned. Moving on from an analysis of earlier periods of integration, the article offers some reflections on our own era of globalization and on the emerging field of global health.

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A Global Perspective: Reframing the History of Health, Medicine, and Disease.

Systems of medicine and nationalist discourse in India: towards "new horizons" in medical anthropology and history.

The inequalities of medical pluralism: Hierarchies of health, the politics of tradition and the economies of care in Indian oncology

Entitlements to health care: why is there a preference for private facilities among poorer residents of Chennai, India?

In so-called traditional medicine in South Asia, substances have not ordinarily been prescribed or consumed in isolation, yet the transformations of compound formulations have been comparatively li...

Niels Brimnes

Papers

Health Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Colonial India