This important study examines population trends in Burma during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, looking in particular at public health and the epidemiology of disease. In developing this material, the author also presents a wide-ranging social history of modern Burma, relating the history of particular diseases to cultural beliefs and practices, as well as population movements, developments in agriculture and irrigation, nutritional trends, and the deployment of government servants and military personnel.

The study uncovers much new information about Burma that will be of considerable interest to a wide range of scholars. It also contains material relating to historical demography, epidemiology, public health, and public administration in colonial times. But what will be especially striking to all readers is will be Richell's account of the indifference of the British to the health needs of their Burmese subjects, not least the refusal to implement the simplest of measures to reduce the appalling death toll.