Podcast Episode 2

In this podcast episode, the host discusses the history of the healthcare system in Bangladesh, specifically focusing on the colonial period and its impact on the current system. The host explains that they initially planned to discuss the science aspect of healthcare but became interested in the colonial background and its influence. They provide a timeline of Bangladesh's history, from British colonial rule to its independence in 1971. The host discusses how colonial healthcare systems were based on race, with better resources and hospitals for colonizers and inferior ones for the colonized. They also mention the use of race theory to justify colonial conquest. The host highlights the impact of colonialism on medicine, including the exploitation of enslaved women for experimentation and the perpetuation of racism in healthcare systems. They give an example of "exotic syphilis," a theory developed in French colonial Algeria that claimed Muslim Algerians were biologically different fro hi welcome back to my second and final episode of my podcast I know very sad but we made it again I hope you found the first episode to be really informing and to give a nice background on to what health care system in Bangladesh looks like today so for this second episode it might be a little bit more boring just it's going to just be me talking instead of having my mom's interview in here as well but for this one I really wanted to focus on my one of the other parts of my central question which were which includes what did the colonial health care system look like what and how did the colonial state bring medicine or why and how did the colonial state bring medicine to South Asia as part of colonial rule how did that groundwork lay the foundation of the health care system so I just wanted to say as background first of like explaining why I wanted to do like or like how I thought of doing this in the first place my original idea for my second semester was to go into the more science aspect of these of the health care system and like the illnesses and the diseases happening and the most common ones in Bangladesh but instead while I was researching and working with my mentor for my second semester like project and what I wanted to research this semester I started realizing that as I was coming up with the questions for the podcast in general that I was really interested in the background of how this health care system came to be and the colonial part of it and how that affected the way that the health care system works now that's something that I've always been interested in but I didn't realize that I I don't know I just didn't for some reason like I guess clock it that this was something that I could focus on and so my mentor really helped me like clean that idea out and be able to use it actually for my project so that's essentially the main focus that I'm going to be focusing on today before I jump into that I kind of wanted to give a timeline of the Bangladesh history just to give you guys you know just a bit of background and bit of background knowledge on what colonialism like how it looked like in Bangladesh and what time and what years it was happening from okay so we're gonna go all the way back to 1666 we're starting there because that is right before the British East India Company takes over so around 1666 the Mughal Empire controls Bengal and attracts foreign traders for its silk and Muslim goods and then at six out on at 1757 the British East India Company defeats Bengal in the Battle of Plassey becoming the first European power to conquer a region of the Indian subcontinent 1770 the company's rule is marked by several famines including the Great Bengal Famine in 1793 the Permanent Settlement Act is imposed on Bengal in 1841 Dhaka College the first college in Bangladesh is established that's also I've been my when I visited Bangladesh my parents made sure to show me this college it's a really big thing in Bangladesh and it's like amazing if you're able to attend um anyways 1857 the Indian Rebellion of 1857 also known as the Sepoy Mutimi breaks out 1858 the East India Company is dissolved and the British Raj begins 1861 the government of India is instructed to establish a representative legislator in Bengal and the Bengal Legislative Assembly begins its proceedings in 1947 British colonial rule over India ends and the downsides Bengal province is partitioned into East Bengal and West Bengal and then in 1955 East Bengal is renamed East Pakistan and then finally 1971 East Pakistan becomes Bangladesh after the Liberation War of Bangladesh which follows the Declaration of Independence on March 26 1971 so Bangladesh relatively is a pretty new country I would say it's it's literally younger than my dad so that I would definitely say that it's a relatively new country technically they've been through their fair share of fighting for their independence and really being under a lot of people's control not just the British but also Pakistan and India which was a huge thing and definitely caused a lot of war and just a lot of fighting so yeah that was just something that I wanted to give some background on just to you know talk like to give knowledge that it's not only the fact that they had they were under British control they were also under a lot of under a lot of control and I'm saying that as well because a lot of the information and the research I found for this specific episode tended to be about colonial rule in Africa rather than in South Asia Asia and a lot of the information that I couldn't find too much information on the colonial rule in South Asia and how that affected health care systems but the information that I ended up using in my research in general is pretty like general and so it's like I can apply that to multiple areas not just Africa and definitely it applies to areas in South Asia as well so we can get in we can get started okay so to start off what does a colonial health care system technically mean so essentially in the colonial health care system race is the basis for resource allocation so two populations are served one the valued colonizer and the other a less valued colonized population the principal purpose of colonial health care is to promote the viability and reproduction of the colonizer the colonized will receive health care when the colonial state wishes to win their loyalty protect a colonized labor force or prevent anti-colonial revolution race based medicine produced segregated hospitals and well-funded modern hospitals for colonizers and underfunded inferior hospitals for the colonized so like a lot of things this obviously traces back so so so many years ago to systems like this where you have the colonizer having great like better resources and better I guess in this term we can use technology as the term compared to the colonized and you know we can see that in ways in Bangladesh how things have not been improving at all with like the hospitals and how they are funded and how they kind of and to know and just going back way way back to the beginning of the history of the health care system to you know see what went wrong and what's happening now but essentially the articles I got a chunk of my research on use registered Kipling's 1899 poem the white man's burden to explain race theory which validated colonial conquest and naturalized white imperial rule so if you've never seen the photo essentially what's happening is it shows John Bull which is like the Uncle Sam of the Britain and then you have Uncle Sam which obviously represents us and they deliver world's people of color to civilization quote-unquote so basically the people in the basket carried by Uncle Sam are labeled Cuba Hawaii Samoa Puerto Rico and the Philippines while the people in the basket carried by John Bull are labeled Zulu China India Sudan and Egypt and essentially you have John Bull ahead of like walking ahead of Uncle Sam and it's like Uncle Sam is following like the US is following Britain and they're all bringing these people these like you know like these other people to civilization and it just so happens to obviously be these specific countries Cuba Hawaii Zulu China the places that they have colonized so I thought this is really interesting especially given the fact that this was used in a lot of the articles that I found my research in and that they used this article to I know this reminds me very much of just like a historical political cartoon that I have had to dissect before in history classes and so I think that's really interesting that these articles were using this as a way to kind of describe the dynamics going on at the time so essentially what happened was the Empire basically shaped medicine so one example of something that was really really horrendous that happened and that was pretty often was that some people they like these these empires they could borrow quote-unquote three enslaved women for experimentation because the Empire made some human beings into property and gynecology was useful to slaveholders who wanted to breed human slaves and thus increase their capital and wealth so a lot of it was because they will they like these people in this case part of the Empire decided that they needed these people and these enslaved women to help them increase their capital and wealth and they use them as property and they had no care for it so science served colonialism primarily by codifying race by quote discovering it in physical and social reality so supposedly in biometrics pathology physiology architecture philosophy philology history and enthrography and sociology so enshrined in edifices of data and perpetrated by institutions racism has continued in medicine long after formal Empire and slavery have ended so yeah this again is just talking to the fact that they you know have been this issue of like health care system and access to it and racism in health care systems have just been an idea that has perpetrated from colonial health care systems many many years ago so one specific example is quote-unquote exotic syphilis which I had no idea I did not know about until I did my research and I think it's so interesting so it's basically a theory that begun in French colonial Algeria by dr. by dr. Amir Louie Berthrand he basically argued that Muslim Algerians were constitutionally different from Frenchmen so Islam polygamy and sexual perversion were alleged to have quote starved the brain to create a uniquely quote Muslim Arab fizzy up physio not me did you know me so they were supposed to be hypersexual with feeble intelligence weakened by hereditary syphilis hereditary syphilis so Berthrand had no proof at all to support his claims but French doctors adopted them unquestioningly for some reason for the conquest of Morocco so from 1912 the Frenchman pro tip sorry I don't know how to say this right from the French protectorates medical establishment confidently and repeatedly repeatedly pronounced Moroccans 80% to 100% syphilitic so again how could doctors proclaim an epidemic that literally did not exist saying that 80% to 100% of the population had syphilis so essentially physicians of the French pro tip protectorate collected data through racist assumptions extrapolated from tiny samples of prostitutes diagnosed syphilis by sight and use nonspecific serological tools like the Wasserman test but it was this a lot of logist it's a funny word syphilologist dr. George is like a parade who invited who invented quote Arab syphilis from 8,000 patient cases patient case histories at his clinic so he basically assembled unrelated skin lesions birth defects and tumors into a pathology atlas for his prize was winning 1923 book but syphilis or Robert as Gary metal Tunisia exotic syphilis ended up expanding to become a global theory through international experts and academic conferences according to this idea the races of our color depend developed cutaneous syphilis because they had underdeveloped brains and primitive nervous systems neurological symptoms afflicted only these civilized and culturally evolved the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study which was happening from 1932 to 1972 attempted to test this hypothesis in a sample of african-american people in the United States and see whether they would develop this quote-unquote exotic syphilis so from 1932 to 1972 the US Public Health Service in Alabama recruited poor african-american men from rural areas and secretly denied them treatment for decades to observe the ravages of their untreated syphilis indigenous which is absolutely insane which is literally so so insane I can't explain how baffled I was when I read this information but I think this is not the only test I've heard of that is similar to this I've also heard of I can't remember the name of this one specifically but that experiment where this guy basically again using enslaved black woman tested and experimented on them and like would do surgeries and things on them and not really give them any type of like numbing this or like laughing gas or anything like that because they were stronger and they can endure just more pain genetically than other people so they didn't need the laughing gas so they didn't need the numbing medicines because they'd be fine which I think is absolutely insane and exotic syphilis is another kind of example of that and just a different way but yeah these types of stories and these types of you know it's hard to believe that they're true just because they're so horrendous and the fact that this this other test this tough key syphilis study happened for literally 40 years is actually insane and that's also the fact that these physicians and these scientists back then would just believe it was no evidence at all and they would just create evidence out of into thin air and so it's honestly really nice and impressive to see how far we have come along from then thank God but again we still have a lot of the effects of those studies happening today you know we still have a bunch of racism in health care systems and within the health care within health care in general and again like I'm bringing us back to Bangladesh a lot of this because you know after like British left Bangladesh specifically in India like they didn't there was nothing really for them like they couldn't figure everything out like they needed they didn't have any assistance to build themselves up and so they were starting again and with the government that they have right now the corrupt government that they have right now it's pretty difficult for them to kind of be able to have this equal health care system and not have be not like it not have it be that only the upper class and the people who can afford it have health care system or have a health care system but just have a health care in general and not have to you know worry about where they're going to get treated so yeah and I kind of wanted to in bringing this back into bringing this more into Bangladesh and more into East medicine and West medicine I kind of wanted to talk about how that like what I just talked about in the history of colonial health care systems and the experiments and things like that kind of affect the way that we use Eastern medicine and Western medicine so indigenous medicines were usually rejected and Western medicines were often used to inculcate values of empire and ideological strategy called quote-unquote civilizing or assimilation indigenous health care was often delegated to Christian churches to shift expense from government to private funds especially in the British Empire so doctors who spoke out against systemic abuses often found themselves reassigned or fired so again I think this has a huge impact on the way that we kind of see Eastern Western medicine I remember doing my 20-minute presentation and talking about it and some of my classmates were saying how it is in fact depending on family to family there are some things that some families go to for like go to Eastern medicine first for and some other things that families go to Western medicine for so just to give an explanation Eastern medicine really looks at like a holistic view of the body and kind of taking into account everything and not just focusing on how to treat one part of the body and it's a lot like and how to treat one part of the body but Western medicine uses a lot more technology I would say instead and they would only focus on really treating a single part of the body and not really looking at a holistic view and I think this is really interesting to point out personally from the research I've done and just from personal opinion I feel like what ends up happening is that you know Bangladesh and is trying to keep up with the Western world with the technology with everything going on obviously because you know Western technology I think also there's a lot of research into it and everything that happens within Western medicine is obviously heavily researched and heavily experimented and you know there's obviously all these experiments and these testings going on to make sure that whatever machine you use or medicine you use is correct and is proper and for the body and for whatever you need to get treated so it makes sense obviously that they would try to use more Western medicine as a lot of people and a lot of the world is however I do believe that the fact that Bangladesh is trying to only use Western medicine is definitely or trying to mainly use Western medicine is definitely something that is not technically like not necessarily working if that makes sense like I genuinely think that you know there's not a lot there's so many people it's heavily like densely densely populated and there are just so many hospitals and just so many you know so many patients that they can take in and you know they can't obviously afford amazing free health care for everyone like it's just not completely possible unfortunately and so I was wondering and I always kind of wondered while doing my research like why hasn't Bangladesh kind of resorted to just Eastern medicine and you know my family we don't like my family we don't really resort to that I think during COVID is when we really resorted to it when my mom was really scared about what was happening she didn't know and that was her safety she resorted to giving us things that she knew from back home and things that she used when she was sick when she was little but it doesn't always have to be that you know like I remember a classmate of mine talking about acupuncture or acupuncture and how that has become a pretty known thing and how people do go to acupuncture so things like that I think for sure it's important and I think if Bangladesh were to implement different practices like that that are different from these public hospitals in these private hospitals it would a hundred percent be more useful just because you know these patients and these citizens wouldn't have to go to these public and have the public private hospitals as their only resort for something that could be solved by something else that may be more accessible to them and more accessible than they realize you know if that makes sense but yeah I think definitely finding that I guess sweet spot of trying to figure out how to assimilate more than just one Eastern or I mean more than just one Western medicine practice as a whole is really important on top of that I remember I was doing my research and I didn't interview my grandma because I thought that would be a little more difficult for me but I was asking her about it and my mom was also telling me about it in Bangladesh what ends up happening is these doctors give patients especially old patients like a lot a lot of medicine like a medicine that they don't need like my grandma a lot of the time she'll end up taking medicine or she used to she'll take medicine that she doesn't need like it's just too much medicine you'll keep obviously too much of a good thing is a bad thing so I think a lot of that it just has to do with like found it like a lot like I think it's interesting is the fact that in a way they're relying on this Western medicine because it's like the only thing that's right like it's could possibly like even if it's there's no such thing as I guess giving too much of a good thing when it's something like Western medicine because it's definitely right there's nothing wrong with it if that kind of makes sense but yeah so I definitely think that there is some good that could happen from trying to combine and assimilate two different types or multiple different types of medicine and health care rather than just focusing on one that obviously isn't providing all the citizens with the same equal health care so that kind of concludes the research and the data that I have for my project I kind of wanted to talk about what the point of this podcast was like what am I doing why didn't I just write a paper like I mentioned before I don't want to write a paper because I thought that that would be really boring I don't know if listening to me talking for like 30 minutes is just as boring but I hope it's been definitely a little more interesting I'm just a different point of view and a different form of media on top of that even though my podcast I don't believe is going out to the public although I did log into this account so I it might be available to the public but it's not I'm not really releasing it as something that I want people to listen to and people to learn from although I'm not doing that I think it's really important to have things talking about health care systems like this on media when I was doing my research I was looking at the health care system and like I've searched up Bangladesh health care system now and I found videos from like maybe 12 years ago like it would be from like four years ago 10 years ago 12 years ago so definitely nothing that's really recent and there has been a lot of stuff happening COVID obviously and like this dengue outbreak happening there's a lot of stuff happening so I think it's really really important for us to take notice of that and to you know give media coverage because you never know what could happen you genuinely never know what could happen if you just continue talking about things that could be improved I mean we've seen I've seen over the years things that are talked about on media and like randomly end up going viral or end up going trending and there are genuine actions taken to help whatever the cause is so I definitely think that something like a podcast or videos on topics like this are genuinely really helpful and if I was to really expose this and give this to the public that's definitely something that I would want from the podcast okay so that concludes my podcast two-part series yay um thank you so so much for listening dr. on saying it is Myers and I hope this was interesting and I would really like to say thank you so much for your guys's help throughout this whole year genuinely I'm really happy with how the way everything turned out and that I was able to figure out this whole podcast thing even though it was a little difficult at first but yeah I hope everything made sense and that all my questions were answered and that I brought a new point of view into what I my original question was so thank you I hope you enjoyed