Book Description

This book assesses the impact of imperial policies on the medical profession in Bengal during colonial rule and covers the period 1800-1947. Dr. Poonam Bala first discusses the Indigenous medical systems which prevailed in ancient and medieval India. She examines the relationship between the ruling powers and the practitioners of the Ayurveda and Unani systems which were, on the whole, positive and led to the growth of both these medical systems under royal patronage. With the advent of British rule in Bengal this relationship began to change. The major part of the author's analysis is concerned with the Bengali experience of colonial administration and Western medicine as the last major challenge to the indigenous medical systems. The period under study was one in which Western medical science was changing rapidly and becoming increasingly professional: The attempt to impose a similar pattern on the Indian systems of medicine led eventually to a conflict of interest between the two, instead of the peaceful co-existence which had prevailed at first. By the end of the nineteenth century, advances in Western medicine had undermined and eroded the similarities in approach and practice which had earlier made extensive cooperation at least a possibility. Dr. Bala discusses this attempt of the Western system to assert hegemony over its indigenous counterparts in Bengal, especially by trying to root itself in the emergent English-speaking elite--the Bhadralok. However, in the final analysis, this effort did not succeed completely because of the great social and religious differences between the two cultures. Thus, although, state policies were formulated to serve British commercial and administrative interests, these could never quite overwhelm the interests of the indigenous population or the medical practitioners who served them. Ultimately, according to the author, medical practices in the period under study have to be understood in terms of both competition and accommodation in the context of a general trend towards the professionalisation and commercialisation of medicine. A book which will command attention not only in departments of medicine but also among anthropologists, historians, political scientists and sociologists.