Setting India on the Wrong Path: Robert McCarrison’s Goitre Research, 1906–35

Abstract

This article examines how Dr. Robert McCarrison’s goitre research in British India in the early twentieth century established his credentials as a medical researcher. It argues that the recognition that McCarrison achieved in this field had more to do with the fact that his research was conducted in a colonial non-Western locale. McCarrison resisted the Iodine Deficiency Disease explanation for goitre and critiqued successful public health initiatives conducted in the USA and Switzerland that involved distributing iodised salt or iodine supplements to populations to prevent goitre outbreaks. Thus, he created a path dependency in British India for himself and other British researchers, as well as his junior and affiliated Indian researchers, which impeded effective public health initiatives to prevent goitre outbreaks in India.