A Plague O' Both Your Houses : Medicine, Power and The Great Flu of 1918 -1919 in Britain and Singapore.

Abstract

This thesis examines the dynamic between medical perception and practice that mark the interactions between the state, the medical profession, and the public in early twentieth-century Britain and Singapore. It is not only a socio-cultural history of the Great Flu of 1918-1919 but also a narrative about how disease and medicine contribute to varying manifestations of power and control. Power and control are examined in three broad ways, through the lenses of evolving conceptions of disease, the expansion of Western scientific medicine, and the colonial encounter. The first approach looks at how notions of disease have developed in the Western imagination and their significance; the second explores how Western scientific medicine, its advocates, and its practitioners came to possess the level of prestige that they have today; the last theme, colonialism, bridges the beginning chapter on Britain with the Singapore-centred ones in the latter half of this thesis by exploring the interaction between British medical systems and those available in Singapore. The values and attitudes surrounding the control of disease gain additional meaning when refracted through the colonial experience because of how the imperial project is closely intertwined with sickness and health. In this way, disease and Western scientific medicine are not only historicised but also re-politicised in order to locate their significance within a phenomenon that has had extensive and deep-seated political, economic, socio-cultural, and ideological ramifications.