Documentation of the history of Medicine in India (Documentation in many lands 8)

Abstract

116-142<span style="font-size:11.0pt;line-height: 115%;font-family:" calibri","sans-serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"times="" new="" roman";="" mso-bidi-font-family:"times="" roman";mso-ansi-language:en-us;mso-fareast-language:="" en-us;mso-bidi-language:ar-sa"="" lang="EN-US">The various activities for the promotion of the study, research, collection of documents, and documentation of the history of medicine in India in the last fifteen years, are briefly described. The annual bibliography, Recent Indian medical historiography, for the period 1954-61 is analyzed from different points of view. Indian contribution on Indian medical history has risen by about 65 per cent, while the foreign contribution to the subject has declined by about 30 per cent, in the 8-year period. Over 80 per cent of the papers are in English. Only 10 per cent of the papers are in Indian languages. Among the latter, Telugu, Hindi, and Urdu take up about 90 per cent. Ancient Indian medicine is the subject most widely written upon. The history of the development of· medicine in India for about the 10th century to the 19th century AD has received little attention. Eighty per cent of the articles are to be found in 50 periodicals. Out of the 2Q8 periodicals indexed during 1954-61, a little over 80 per cent of the papers are to be found in the 111 Indian periodicals. Coverage of the articles by certain indexing periodicals is also indicated. Periodicals from India, Great Britain, Germany, and USA together contain about 95 per cent of the papers. About 80 per cent of the papers have seeped into periodicals devoted to subjects other than history of medicine and the history of science. The possible reasons for some of the features mentioned are advanced. Periodicals in the General Medicine group gave over 50 papers per year but the number of articles per periodical in that group was only about 6. Compared to this though the periodicals on the history of medicine gave over <span style="font-size: 11.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:" calibri","sans-serif";mso-fareast-font-family:="" "times="" new="" roman";mso-bidi-font-family:"courier="" new";mso-ansi-language:en-us;="" mso-fareast-language:en-us;mso-bidi-language:ar-sa"="" lang="EN-US">18 articles per periodical, they gave only a little over 27papers per year. The main types of the seventy three books cited in <span style="font-size: 11.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:" calibri","sans-serif";mso-fareast-font-family:="" "times="" new="" roman";mso-bidi-font-family:arial;mso-ansi-language:en-us;="" mso-fareast-language:en-us;mso-bidi-language:ar-sa"="" lang="EN-US">the bibliography are also indicated.</span