Change and creativity in early modern Indian medical thought

This paper begins with a frame story, the reports on Indian medicine recorded in the 17th century travelogue of the British traveller John Fryer. Fryer’s observations as an outsider are contrasted with an internal view of the works of three quite different Sanskrit medical authors who were working at about the time of his visit: the Vaidyajiivana of Lolimbaraja, the Rogaarogavada of Vıresvara, and the Ayurvedasaukhya ascribed to Todaramalla. Questions are posed concerning the purposes of these works, their relative popularity, and their reception. Finally, Fryer’s failure to penetrate the culture of Sanskritic medicine is highlighted

Policy formation and debate concerning the government regulation of ayurveda in Great Britain in the twenty-first century

Since 2000, the British House of Lords and the Government have been working towards a regulatory scheme for Complementary and Alternative medicine in Britain, a scheme that will include ayurveda.The present paper discusses these regulatory moves by the Government, and suggests that shortcomings in the range and type of evidence taken into account by the various Government agencies will leave a legacy of difficulties for CAM practitioners and their patients. Since 2000, the British House of Lords and the Government have been working towards a regulatory scheme for Complementary and Alternative medicine in Britain, a scheme that will include ayurveda.The present paper discusses these regulatory moves by the Government, and suggests that shortcomings in the range and type of evidence taken into account by the various Government agencies will leave a legacy of difficulties for CAM practitioners and their patients

The combinatorics of tastes and humours in classical Indian medicine and mathematics

This paper explores some combinatoric problems which are treated in the Sanskrit literature of both ayurveda (medicine) and of jyothsastra (mathematics)

Indian medical thought on the eve of colonialism

British colonial power decisively established itself on the Indian subcontinent between 1770and 1830. This period and the century following it have become the subjects of muchcreative and insightful research on medical history: the use of medical institutions andpersonnel as tools for political leverage and power; Anglicist/Orientalist debatessurrounding medical education in Calcutta; the birth of so-called Tropical Medicine. Despitemuch propaganda to the contrary, European medicine did not offer its services in a vacuum.Long-established and sophisticated medical systems already existed in India, developing innew and interesting ways in the period just before the mid-eighteenth century

A Body Of Knowledge: The Wellcome Ayurvedic Anatomical Man And His Sanskrit Context.

A widely-known painting currently in the Wellcome Library (Iconographic 574912i) depicts an anatomical view of the male human body according to the tenets of classical Indian medicine, or ayurveda. The painting is surrounded by text passages in the Sanskrit language on medical and anatomical topics. In this paper, the Sanskrit texts are identified, edited, translated and assessed. I establish a terminus a quo for the painting, and explore the relationship of text and image

Interpreting the Image of the Human Body in Premodern India

This paper sets out two main arguments. In part one, a description of the adherents of the various intellectual disciplines and religious faiths in premodern India is given, each having developed distinct and different imagined bodies; for example, the body described in Tantric circles had little or nothing in common with the body described in medical circles. In part two, an account is given of the encounter between Ayurvedic anatomy and early colonial European anatomy which led initially to attempts at synthesis; these gave way to an abandonment of the syncretist vision of the body and the acceptance of an epistemological suspension of judgment, in which radically different body conceptualizations are simultaneously held in unacknowledged cognitive dissonance