The book investigates certain obscure but important aspects of the social history of disease and medicine in colonial eastern India, covering Assam, Bengal, and Bihar and Orissa-against the backdrop of the outbreak of a lethal disease called kala-azar, or black fever, scientifically known as visceral leishmaniasis, which spread its wings as an epidemic from the 1870s-and chisels out the interaction between the microbe behind the disease and medical interventionism on the one hand and health officials and the state on the other.