Nandini Bhattacharya is associate professor at the University of Houston, Texas.
The great contribution of this book is that it provides a longer historical perspective and narrative than many previous works, suggesting that the rapid rise of the pharmaceutical industry in India can only be understood by knowing its historical context, especially in the colonial period prior to independence in 1947. It draws together evidence from a wide range of fields which go beyond the remedies themselves, and extend from the interaction between western and indigenous systems of medicine, to the disparate roles of practitioners, and to the role of colonial authorities in manufacturing medicines. The book demonstrates the eclecticism of every aspect of the drug trade, illustrating how a lack of legislation and regulation largely resulted in a 'free for all' in the making, supply, and sale of remedies with the consequent ubiquity of counterfeiting, adulteration, and supply of sub-standard medicines. Stuart Anderson, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine