Book review: Epidemics, empire, and environments: cholera in Madras and Quebec City, 1818-1910

Abstract

Michael Zeheter examines the experiences of two British colonial cities (Madras and Quebec) to epidemic disease threats, largely centered on the dread nineteenth-century disease of cholera. Zeheter seeks to compare and contrast the reactions of local authorities and medical experts to “their perceptions of the disease and the local environment, and their attempts to prevent or mitigate epidemics by altering conditions in that environment” (p. 14). He draws on a modified actor-network theory that posits “analyzing space is a means for studying not only human society but the complex interactions between humans and their environment, alive or not” (p. 15).