State and indigenous medicine in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bengal: 1800-1947

Abstract

The thesis examines medical education and medical policies in British Bengal over the period 1800 to 1947. The material for this was gathered from the Libraries and Archives in Edinburgh, London, Calcutta and Delhi.

The thesis starts with an outline of indigenous medicine in ancient and medieval India. It examines the nature of relationship between ruling authorities and the growth of the Ayurvedic and Unani systems of medicine. Although medicine in India was, by the time of British rule, represented as a set of static rituals and practices, the history of medicine was, in reality, a history of accommodation and change, frequently associated with invasion or changes in rulers.

The remainder of the thesis examines the impact of British rule and British medicine as the last of a series of major challenges facing Indian medicine. The period is one in which western medicine, in particular, medicine in Britain, was changing and " professionalising. Thus, much of the thesis concerns attempts to professionalise medicine in India where competition and accommodation between the different forms of medicine were a primary consideration.

Initially, it seemed possible that the two systems of medicine could live in peaceful co-existence and mutual accommodation, but gradually, with professional pressure from Britain and State sanctioning in India, western medicine moved to a dominant position in State provision of medical services. By the end of the nineteenth century, advances in western medicine undermined the similarities of theory and practice which, earlier, made extensive co-operation seem at least a possibility.

Western medicine, in common with other professions in India, required facilities and education in English. These were concentrated in Bengal in an elite section of the community, commonly kown as the Bhadralok. Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, this section of the community not only experienced the greatest advantage in their relationship with the British State in India, but, as the best-educated and articulate section of the community, was most active in the growing nationalist movement from the end of the nineteenth century. They dominated medical education but were receptive to the idea of the regeneration and promotion of indigenous forms of medicine. In these circumstances, western medicine never achieved a total dominance and by the end of the period, medical education in Bengal contained aspects of both systems.

Social and religious conditions in India were vastly different from those in Britain and, to a large extent, the failure of western medicine to achieve the sort of professional dominance common in Britain, is hardly surprising. State policies were formed to serve commercial and administrative purposes but these did not always coincide with the interests of either the indigenous population or of medical practitioners. Thus, as with earlier periods, medicine in the period under study has to be understood in terms of competition and accommodation.