NUTRITION, SANITATION, HYGIENE, AND THE LIKELIHOOD OF DEATH - THE BRITISH ARMY IN INDIA C1870-1920

This paper studies the health experience of British soldiers and their families in India between 1870 and 1920 in the light of the major controversies about the beginnings of the health transition. It finds that while death rates began to decline as the result of the introduction of better environmental sanitation during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, health education and personal hygiene had a much more dramatic effect during the first decade of the twentieth. It concludes by showing that, despite all the care and attention bestowed on their health, death rates of British and Indian soldiers around 1910 were a good deal higher than those of ordinary Indians of the same age and sex during the 1970s and 1980s.