Learning Institutions in South Asian Medicine (Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 2014).

International Education and Research Journal (IERJ), 2021

This historical exploration traces the introduction and evolution of modern medicine in India, commencing with the Portuguese in the sixteenth century and culminating in the establishment of medical institutions by the British and French. The narrative unfolds with the inception of medical education in Goa and the subsequent development of the School of Medicine and Surgery by 1842. A pivotal shift occurred in 1835 under Governor-General Lord Bentinck, leading to the abolishment of existing institutions and the directive for a new medical college to align with European standards. This marked a transition from vernacular languages to English as the medium of instruction, reflecting Macaulay's influential education policies. The founding of the New Medical College in Calcutta in 1835 represented a watershed moment, with the integration of Western and Ayurvedic teachings. Challenges included societal resistance to cadaver dissection, overcome by innovative teaching methods. The narrative extends to the establishment of medical colleges in Madras and Bombay, shaping the trajectory of medical education in India. The abstract encapsulates a comprehensive historical account, addressing the nuanced evolution of medical institutions, cultural challenges, and the transformative impact of Western medicine on India's healthcare landscape.

Colonialism and medicine shared an inextricable link, as maintenance of health in distant and unknown lands was a major concern of early colonisers. The early naval fleet from Europe included surgeons with responsibility for the health of passengers during exploratory tours, but they were also pioneers to report about the flora, fauna and resources of these distant lands. With the gradual expansion of colonial rule, medicine and medical practitioners assumed a new role in the empire's consolidation. Western medicine in India became synonymous with 'colonial medicine', turning into 'the operation of colonial power within and through medicine in a colonial setting' (Arnold, 2000: 15). Medicine and related issues in nineteenth-and twentieth-century India cannot be studied by overlooking the colonial context. This edited volume examines various aspects of colonial domination of Western medicine and subsequent indigenous responses of the common public, political leaders, middle class and landed elites and medical practitioners of different indigenous healing systems. Indigenous responses, ranging from outright opposition to selective adoption of various traits of Western medicine, were not exclusively determined by medical/healing concerns and were circumscribed by various political, social and economic motives. The book attempts to analyse these responses within the broader framework of 'shift of paradigms' as delineated by the path-breaking work of kuhn (1992 [1962]), which challenged the conventional view of linear progression of science merely through new discoveries and instead introduced the idea of occasional revolutionary changes in 'way of thinking' or 'approach to a problem', precipitating fundamental changes in science. Such paradigmatic changes among practitioners of indigenous medicine are easily discernible, even in cases where contestations with Western medicine unleashed revivalist and nationalist tendencies. Madhulika Banerjee shows how efforts to revive Ayurveda began by posing it as modernity's Other owing to its stark difference and supposed epistemic and ontological differences with biomedicine. Yet by itself resorting to the process of pharmaceuticalisation, it introduced revolutionary changes in the way Ayurvedic medicines were dispensed to patients. Banerjee argues that the birth of Ayurvedic pharmaceuticals was inevitable for Ayurveda to find a place in the rapid socioeconomic changes of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century India (p. 38). Similarly, Neshat Quaiser delineates various changes introduced within the Unani system of healing during its contestation with Western medicine. However, Quaiser views these changes as the product of Unani's 'own internal logic of renewal' (p. 123), downplaying the effects of external pressures generated by Western medicine through pharmaceuticalisation, standardisation, institutionalisation of training and professionalisation. While one can certainly take into account such 'internal logic of

Social History of Medicine, 2007

South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2020

The history of the Calcutta Medical College (CMC) is intertwined with the rise of hospital medicine and modern medical pedagogy in India. This article will argue that the extension of medicinal practice in India ushered in a new paradigm of knowledge: the singular act of cadaveric dissection introduced indelible changes in the perception of the body and disease. The CMC was constituted by an ensemble of different components medical teaching at University College London (UCL), the unique surgical practices of the Company’s surgeons and the specificity of a uniquely ‘colonial’ praxis. The transition from military medical training to general medical education involved various processes of acculturation—visual, verbal and psychological. CMC played a key role in the materialisation of public health programmes in colonial India. Consequently, Ayurvedics were caught in a position of simultaneously being ‘modern’ as well as ‘original’. As a result of the interactive process, the western medical toolkit reconstituted the terminologies and practice of Ayurveda so that, epistemologically speaking, they became a variant of modern medicine.

NTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin, 2012

Ntm, 2009

Indian Journal of History of Science, 2011

"This was originally published in the Indian Journal of History of Science 2011, 46(1): 63-108. In my paper, I shall argue that Western medicine has passed through epistemological and paradigmatic shifts from Bedside medicine to Hospital medicine to Laboratory medicine (and, now, Techno-medicine). Having gained modern knowledge of anatomy, instead of previous two-dimensional perception of the body, disease began to be perceived to being located within a three-dimensional body in modern medicine. The singular act of post-mortem dissection differentiated Hospital medicine from Bedside medicine and established its unquestionable authority over Indian medical knowledge systems. In our theorization, Bedside medicine is inclusive of both traditional Indian practice within domestic setting as well as pre-hospital European medical practices in India. To note, throughout the entire period following European renaissance and industrial revolution there emerged capital, competitive market economy, working class and predominance of technology in social life which lead to an objective mode of learning in social life and psyche. It was altogether different from the Indian mode of learning. These specific phenomena prepared the canvas over which the new knowledge of knowing the body and health could be written for the first time and for ever in human history. The study of medicine in ancient India was the first momentous step forward from daiva-byāpāśraya bhesasja to yukti-byāpāśraya bhesaja. There are attempts at theorization in both Caraka- and Suśruta Samhitā with regard to anatomical knowledge as well as knowledge of health and healing. In Āyurvedic knowledge, there is no single conception of the body, but a dominant one – a bodily frame – through which dosa-s, dhātu-s and mala-s flow. The doctrine of tri-dosa, resembling “humoral” theory of Greek origin which was the predominant concept of Western medicine till the beginning of the nineteenth century, explained disease causation. By 600 A.D. Āyurvedic anatomical practices were in complete disuse. Āyurvedic surgical practices were based not on the knowledge of anatomical organs, but on regional anatomy and marman-s (lethal/vital spots). Later on, new additions to classical Āyurvedic knowledge were grounded on external examination and scanty knowledge of the internal organs. One major problem of understanding Āyurvedic texts is to read back the context-sensitive vocabulary with our modern context-specific medical knowledge. Finally, on their behalf, Āyurvedics, following colonial/modern medical encounters, were caught within a two-edged sword. First, since antiquity treatment of a disease could be efficiently resolved by tri-dosa theory and marman-s, without having any modern anatomical knowledge. Second, to establish Āyurveda as a valid and eternally “modern” repository of knowledge, learning modern anatomy became mandatory for high caste Āyurvedics to usurp it from the lower-caste practitioners. Consequently, a shift from traditional philosophy of tri-doṣa theory to ‘modern’ notion of organ localization of disease occurred. It reconstituted the philosophical matrix of Āyurveda through this ‘modernization’ of Āyurvedic knowledge of anatomy. "