1. Kill or Cure: week 7 South Asian Medicine Lecturer: Roberta Bivins

2. Global Medical Systems

3. South Asian Medical ‘Systems’/Practices Ayurveda Unani Tibb Siddha Astrological medicine ‘Western’ medicine Daktari ‘Subaltern medicine’ And the rest…

4. Characteristics of South Asian Medicine synthetic; rooted in or structured by religious texts incorporates psychological, moral and ecological phenomena within its system of assessing and accounting for corporeal phenomena health-focused (patient-centred); emphasis on pharmaceutics, dietetics and moderation values subjective, experienced body, environment; privileges patient history progress balanced by regress vital power (ojas) is at centre of health and illness; physical body is permeated by non-material forces Makes rhetorical claims upon canonical texts -- texts considered to contain revealed truths -- as well as upon established medical classics which are considered to be entirely human productions. microcosm/macrocosm based on religious models of society as well as physical world view; medicine of systematic correspondences alchemical body -- purification and conversion of base matter to pure (spiritual) substances

5. Ayurveda: Hydraulic body; 3 circulating humors (dosas, linked to the 3 elements, air, fire and water, and the vital essences, agni, prana, ojas) Seven tissues (dhatu) bind mind and spirit to the body Practitioners: Vaids Siddha : Alchemical body, purifying spirit (ojas – loose translation could be ‘vital energy’) from matter as the life force (prana) flows through the body;

6. Purifying the Body Hydraulic body (How?/What?) Tantric alchemical body (Why?) Body models, therapies involve mixture of Vedic and Buddhist ideas about matter and the relationship between the body and the universe.

7. Unani Tibb The Four Humors Practitioners: Hakims

8. Unani Tibb: taking the pulse

9. The Arrival of ‘Western’ Medicine: India under the East India Company 1756-1859

10. Western medicine was known in India as ‘allopathy’ or ‘English medicine’ – in Hindi: ‘Angreji dava’. Indians who practised ‘English medicine’ were known as daktars and their practice ‘doctory’ (daktari).

13. India, Empire and Epidemics Strategies: Prevention via sanitation and inoculation/vaccination Control via quarantine, draconian interventions into daily life and practices Education – especially in relation to hygiene, but also nutrition, social habits, ideas of disease.

15. The revival of Ayurveda and Unani Tibb

16. A Bengali Daktar’s Practice 1874

19. Unqualified ‘daktar’ gives injection

20. Healing shrines

21. Exorcist – the Dangs, Gujarat

22. Ms. S. was mentally affected by witchcraft power - received baptism.

24. Standardisation of indigenous medicines

26. Ayurvedic medical tourism - Kerala

28. A word about the readings… David Hardiman: this is a history of how the history of Ayurveda has been written, as much as an account of the ‘(re)invention’ of Ayurveda itself. There are lots of names and historiographic arguments in sections I and II, but don’t be scared off; from section III on, you’ll get a nice history of how ‘modern’ Ayurveda and Unani Tibb emerged from orientalism, empire, nationalism and ethno-sectarianism. Key points: the ‘invention’ or ‘(re)invention’ of medical traditions and systems; the ‘purification’ and institutionalisation of ‘syndicated’ Ayurveda/Unani Tibb; the importance of examining medical PRACTICE as well as theory and rhetoric. NB: the notes offer a pretty comprehensive bibliography of the best writing on Ayurveda/Unani Tibb – so it’s great for those of you doing papers on Indian medicine or medicine in empire…

29. A word about the readings… Projit Mukharji: As well as introducing us to ‘daktari medicine’ (a complex ‘vernacular’ fusion of ‘western’ and indigenous medical knowledge, beliefs and practices), this text challenges the idea that imperialism was the stage for ‘episodic’ confrontational ‘medical encounters’ between rival discrete and well-bounded medical systems, each searching for dominance. A closer reading of this process, and medicine in practice, he argues, paints a different picture of ‘hybridization, negotiation, etc.’ Key concepts: ‘western’ medicine had both ‘productive’ and ‘repressive’ facets in India; ‘western’ medicine in India (as in Africa) is, in fact, also ‘Indian’: it has been ‘domesticated’ or ‘provincialised’, and even used as a tool of ‘resistance’ for some; moreover, a patient centred view illustrates a medical market and ‘healer hopping’ that challenged the idea that either ‘Western’ or ‘Indian’ medical practices were ‘systemic’; at the same time, a medical lens exposes ‘felt communities’.