A Cure for Heat: Environmental Pathologies and Technological Empiricism in British India

This article discusses the co-evolution of nineteenth-century environmental medicine and climate control in British India, as fear of climatic changes spurred technological empiricism and the medicalization of building interiors. Rather than alleviating Europeans' fear of hot climates, a suspected source of disease according to environmental theories of morbidity, architectural-medical technologies imposed strict bodily and building regimes in their stead. Thermantidotes are a case in point. Combining fans with wetted, woven mats to produce evaporative cooling, thermantidotes were championed by medical writers for their ability to mitigate the effects of hot climates. However, when the technology failed to curb the spread of contagions among white settlers, medical writers responded by identifying new threats and prescribing strict behaviour to prevent exposure to climatic changes. These bodily habits were reflected in colonial building culture, whose darkened rooms and labour needs highlight the instrumentality of medical technologies in solidifying and spatializing imperial authority.