It is in his work on the telegraph system — and particularly his role in rebuilding it after it was largely destroyed in the Indian Rebellion of 1857 — that we can see more clearly the dubious nexus between such scientific projects and the endeavours of colonialism, a connection made more explicit at moments of political crisis. As far as O'Shaughnessy's contribution to medicine is concerned, its correlation with colonial power is perhaps not as obvious. Yet it does contribute, even if unintentionally to the larger discourse of knowledge/power, relating to what Shiv Visvanathan and Ashis Nandy call the "industrial grid". Western medicine, through sheer claim of objectivity, marginalised traditional, and subsequently termed, "folk medicine", while at the same time deriving its legitimacy on foreign soil from references to indigenous texts and social practices, through Sanskrit and Perso-Arabic scholars and local practitioners. In this regard O'Shaughnessy was no exception. Rather than thinking only of centres (individual or institutional) of knowledge production in the colonies, we'd do better then to focus more on the complexity of networks and exchanges -- the go-betweens, as Kapil Raj calls them -- that played such a key role in the production of the colonial sciences. It is here, in light of such an approach, that the detailed notes left behind by William Brooke O'Shaughnessy prove so invaluable, offering a rare and honest glimpse into how such networks functioned.