In what way does a nation come into being by means of hygiene? And how can hygiene shape its people through historical moments? These are just two of the important questions that the medical historian Davisakd Puaksom asks in his book, Pathogen, the Body and Medical State: History of Modern Medicine in Thai Society.
The past few decades have witnessed a growing literature in both English and Thai on the way in which the Thai state and its people are constructed by state apparatuses. Scholars have demonstrated that political, economic, and cultural institutions have played an important role in the creation and enactment of the Thai nation and its populace in modern times. Davisakd's Pathogen, the Boch and Medical State displays for the reader another institution that is crucial in terms of human, biological, and bodily intimacies: healthcare. This book, written in Thai, investigates historical accounts of Wester medicine in Thai society from the early nineteenth century to the present. It delineates the establishment of the present-day healthcare system. Mainly drawing from a Foucauldian frame, the author illuminates the Thai state's appropriation of Western medicine as a form of governmentality to inculcate its people through medical institutions and policy. He wants to show an alternative view in which pathogens are central to the construction of the Thai nation. Central to this claim is that the disciplining of Thai citizens has been made possible by operational controls over pathogens (33).
