Featured Galleries: Western Medicine

The history of western medicine in the Indian subcontinent is discontinuous, fraught with tensions, and continues to compete with other healing practices. It was in the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries that formal institutions such as dispensaries, hospitals, and eventually the street-side allopathic and homeopathic clinics gained ground. The extension of the public health services from their initial location in the British enclaves was a slow, gradual political and social process. Post-independent Delhi saw the emergence of many health institutions, symbols of a modern, progressive India. One such institute was the National Institute for Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases. One can also see from the 1980's onwards a concern with the issues of mental health, albeit from non-governmental organizations such as the Sanjivini Society For Mental Health. This gallery focuses on multiple spaces where public health care emerged