Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
publishedVersion
Publication Date
5-2023
Abstract
In this article, I examine epidemiological research into scrub typhus in British Malaya between 1924 and 1974. Interwar research, I show, explained the incidence of the disease through conjunctions of rats, mites, plantations, lalang grass, and “jungle.” In the process, interwar researchers bridged a novel scientific vocabulary centering on disease “reservoirs” with older suspicions of plantations enabling “pests,” as well as with a later, explicitly ecological understanding of infectious disease. In exploring this history I thereby help to re-historicize the emergence of ecological notions of disease reservoirs, whilst also pushing at the limit-points of influential notions of “tropicality.”
Keywords
Disease reservoirs, ecology, Malaya, plantations, rodents, scrub typhus
Discipline
Asian History | Medical Humanities
Research Areas
Integrative Research Areas
Publication
Medical Anthropology
Volume
42
Issue
4
First Page
340
Last Page
353
ISSN
0145-9740
Identifier
10.1080/01459740.2023.2185887
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group
Citation
GREATREX, Jack.
“Back to the jungle”: Investigating rats, grass, scrub typhus, and plantations in Malaya, 1924–1974. (2023). Medical Anthropology. 42, (4), 340-353.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/421
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2023.2185887