Introductory Remarks
On 19 November 1946, Albert Camus wrote –
The seventeenth century was the century of mathematics, the eighteenth that of the physical sciences, and the nineteenth that of biology. Our twentieth century is the century of fear. I will be told that fear is not a science. But science is no doubt involved, for its latest advances have brought it to the point of negating itself, while its perfected technology threatens the entire world with destruction.[1]
One or two things may be considered here. First, Camus designates a special characteristic to a particular century experienced by Europe. The impact of mathematics on medicine is perhaps best described through Newton’s effect on medicine – “Newton’s mathematical physics, which far surpassed Borelli’s in sophistication, inspired Pitcairne in his search for a mathematical medicine both by its method and by its conclusions.”[2] Second, he stresses the importance of “its perfected technology”. In our research work under the project, we shall come see the changes in perception throughout the gamut of travelers in different centuries, as well as their sense of superiority arising out technological excellence.
Before the advent of the 17th century there were two important occurrences. We should briefly take these happenings into our understanding. European interest in Indian plants and indigenous modes of treatment started with European colonization. Two works of our interest are Garcia de Orta’s Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da Índia (Conversations on the simples, drugs and medicinal substances of India), the first edition of which was published at Goa in 1563. I have quoted from the English translation in 1913.
His book deals with a series of substances, many of them unknown or the subject of confusion and misinformation in Europe at this period. For instance, prior to his publication, tamarind was thought to come from a palm tree. He also noted many details on plants and their propagation. Garcia de Orta (or Garcia d’Orta) (1501? – 1568) was a Portuguese Renaissance Sephardi Jewish physician, herbalist and naturalist. He was a pioneer of tropical medicine, pharmacognosy and ethnobotany, working mainly in Goa, then a Portuguese overseas territory.
Garcia de Orta used an experimental approach to the identification and the use of herbal medicines, rather than the traditional approach of using received knowledge. The Coloquios has 59 chapters and it was written in the style of a dialogue between da Orta and a traditional doctor, Ruano. Using a dialogue form was a common literary practice when dealing with the tensions between established and new forms of knowledge. Orta’s work questions assumptions made in the past with alternative hypotheses to the ideas from Ibn-Sina and Averroes. His scientific method has been suggested to be a combination of empiricism and hypothesism.
(Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da India – Title page, 1582 edn.)
From Colóquios dos simples we come to know – “As a medicine Assa-Fetida is used by itself, and not, as you suppose, only with other ingredients. In this you are mistaken, as Sepulveda was mistaken, for Guarinero and many others use it by itself. Among the Indians it is good for the stomach.”[3]
Again, “That which in Portugal is used by apothecaries for Calamo aromatico, and which is also a medicine much in demand in India, as well for men and women, as for horses in their infirmities, is called Vaz in Guzerat, Bache in the Deccan, Vazabu in Malabar, Daringo by the Malays, Heger in Persia, Vaicam in the Concan, which is near the sea, and Cassab aldirira in Arabia.”[4] He noted, “They (Portuguese) are not desirous of knowing anything about the things in the countries they visit. If they know a product, they do not seek to learn from what tree it comes, and if they see it they do not compare it with one of our trees, nor ask about its fruits, nor what it is like.”[5] And lamented that the Portuguese “only procure a knowledge of how best to dispose of their merchandize…”[6]
The second important one is Hendrik van Rheede’s Hortus Malabaricus which is a 17th-century botanical treatise on the medicinal properties of flora of the Malabar coast (the Western Ghats district, a region principally covering the areas which are presently in the Indian states of Kerala, Karnataka and Goa)). It was compiled by the Governor of Dutch Malabar from 1669 to 1676.
The Hortus Malabaricus comprises 12 volumes of about 500 pages each, with 794 copper plate engravings. The first of the 12 volumes of the book was published in 1678, and the last in 1693. It is believed to be the earliest comprehensive printed work on the flora of Asia and the tropics.
The task was mind-boggling. Each of the 742 plants mentioned in Hortus had to be tracked down to the areas they were originally collected from over 300 years ago, and then identified anew because modern taxonomic classification has changed significantly in this period. It showed a book that went far beyond plants, to shed light on the society, culture, science and language of its time.
(Plants of the coastal region are perfectly drawn in the book by local and European artists)
This vast book – a treasure trove of Indian botany – influenced Linnaean taxonomical classification of plants. Linnaeus wrote to a friend – “How absurd is the procedure of many naturalists in regard to insects, who give an account of them and show us pictures, but do not give any names … Wherefore I much prefer the barbarous names of the ‘Hortus Malabaricus’ to the absence of names in Merian’s account of the plants of Surinam.”[7]
Another information of interest is that John Huyghen von Linschoten says of the Indian physicians, “These Heathen phisitions doe not onely cure there owne nations [and countriemen] but the Portingales also, for the Viceroy himselfe, the Archbishop, and all the Monkes and Friers doe put more trust in them then in their own countrimen, whereby they get great [store of] money, and are much honoured and esteemed.”[8] During the time, European medicine was still highly doctrinal and presumably inferior to its Āyurvedic counterpart in terms of therapeutic efficacy. Only surgeons enjoyed any professional respect from the Mughal emperors.
But this happy marriage of exchange between European and Indian knowledge systems did not last long. Since most of Asia’s fundamental tools, medicinal and mathematical conceptions were similar to Europe before 1500, the Europeans of the sixteenth century concentrated upon products rather than devices or ideas. Over the course of the sixteenth century this flow was gradually reversed. Scholars have argued – “In Europe confidence grew with the passage of time that Europeans were braver, more efficient, and better organized than the observed people of Asia…the Europeans saw nothing practical to borrow from them…”[9] Pre-sixteenth century European travelers “viewed their Christian faith, rather than their mastery of the natural world, as the key source of their distinctiveness from and superiority to non-Western peoples.”[10] Post-seventeenth century European surgery attained new prestige. This new prestige “seems to have split over into the beginnings of western medical ideas into India.”[11] Pearson tells us that at the most, Asia kept doing what it had been doing for centuries; Europe changed basically.
Schiebinger informs – “Historians of the eighteenth century have also begun to detail how botany – expertise in bioprospecting, plant identification, transport, and acclimatization – worked hand-in-hand with European colonial expansion.”[12] Moreover – “The eighteenth century did, indeed, witness major developments in systematics (nomenclature and taxonomy) in many fields, including botany … It is important, however, to see, as the great French comparative anatomist Louis-Jean-Marie Daubenton emphasized in the eighteenth century, and as William Stearn stressed more recently, how the “science” of botany continued to inform and be informed by what we today would call “applied” botany … Across Europe, eighteenth-century political economists – from English and French mercantilists to German and Swedish cameralists – taught that the exact knowledge of nature was key to amassing national wealth, and hence power.”[13]
Pratt has talked about “planetary consciousness” which was infusing the European mind. She explains it:
The systematizing of nature, I am suggesting, is a European project of a new kind, a new form of what one might call planetary consciousness among Europeans. For three centuries European knowledge-making apparatuses had been construing the planet above all in navigational terms. These terms gave rise to two totalizing or planetary projects. One was circumnavigation, a double deed that consists of sailing round the world then writing an account of it (the term “circumnavigation” refers either to the voyage or the book). Europeans have been repeating this double deed almost continually since it was first accomplished by Magellan in the 1520s. The second planetary project, equally dependent on ink and paper, was the mapping of the world’s coastlines, a collective task that was still underway in the eighteenth century, but known to be completable. In 1704 it was possible to speak, in the words of one editor of travel books, of the “Empire of Europe” as extending “to the utmost bounds of the earth, where several of its nations have conquests and colonies.”[14]
Travel writers of the 17th century, I think, were carrying this view of “planetary consciousness” knowingly or unknowingly. It was one of the driving forces of their accounts and taking details of Indian medical system. The major problem with these travel accounts is that almost without exception all the travellers were attached and employed to Indian royal courts. As a result, they have spoken voluminously on various aspects of Indian regality, their social interactions, internal feuds, series of wars, Indian custom, socio-politico-cultural life and so on. They have told very sparsely, excepting a few, particularly on Indian medical practices. Hence it becomes difficult to locate their medical perception and place it against Indian medical practices amidst so many pages.
Against this perspective, I try to systematically narrate those accounts described by the travelers of 17th century. 17th century may be regarded as a watershed in the travellers’ accounts for the reasons detailed later on. Starting from Boullaye-le-Gouz’s Les Voyages et Observations there are a good number of travel documents even by learned and trained European physicians. For our study of the seventeenth-century, we limited us to thorough readings of the accounts of five most noted travelers of this period. These are (1) Francois Bernier’s Travels in the Mughal Empire (1670); (2) Jean Baptiste Tavernier’s Travels in India (1676); (3) Niccolao Manucci’s Storia Da Mogor or Mogul India 1653-1708, Vol. I-IV (trans. William Irvine); (4) John Fryer’s A New Account of East-India and Persia, in Eight Letters. Being Nine Years Travels, Begun 1672. And Finished 1681 (1698); and (5) John Ovington’s A Voyage to Suratt, In the Year 1689 (1696).
Travelers’ Accounts
Francois Bernier (1625 – 1688), as we would find, stands apart amongst these travelers. Bernier’s teacher was Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), a French philosopher, scientist, mathematician, teacher and priest, who taught in Digne, Aix and the Royal College at Paris. Bernier became a Doctor of Medicine from the great institute of Montpellier. When he was a student there path-breaking anatomical and physiological experiments were being conducted by stalwarts like Pecquet. He says, “I made a grand display of professional skill…and declared I was the most eminent physician in the world…”[15] Tavernier confirms his reputation in his Travels in India (Vol. 1). One of the wives of Dārā Shikoh was attacked with erysipelas which was quickly relieved by Bernier. In this case other native physicians failed to find a cure.
(Bernier and Facsimile of the 1830 Paris edition of his book)
He makes some acute observations on Indian mode of treatment and medical texts. “On physic they have a great number of small books, which are rather collections of recipes than regular treatises. The most ancient and the most esteemed is written in verse.”[16] He notes, “Their practice differs essentially from ours, and that it is grounded on the following acknowledged principles: a patient with a fever requires no great nourishment; the sovereign remedy for sickness is abstinence; nothing is worse for a sick body than meat broth, for it soon corrupts in the stomach of one afflicted with fever…”[17]
We would note that in Bernier’s perception Indian medicine is based principally on diets and health regimes. Surgical practices were better avoided – “a patient should be bled only on extraordinary occasions, and where the necessity is most obvious—as when there is reason to apprehend a brain fever, or when an inflammation of the chest, liver, or kidneys, has taken place.”[18] He wryly comments, “Whether these modes of treatment be judicious, I leave to our learned physicians to decide; I shall only remark that they are successful in Hindoustan, and that the Mogol and Mahometan physicians, who follow the rules of Avicenna and Averroes, adopt them no less than do those of the Gentiles, especially in regard to abstinence from meat broth.”[19]
Evidently, he makes the Indian case open to learned European physicians and makes his second move to judge their methods in the light of scientific experiments going on in Europe. “It is not surprising that the Gentiles understand nothing of anatomy. They never open the body either of man or beast, and those in our household always ran away, with amazement and horror, whenever I opened a living goat or sheep for the purpose of explaining to my Agah the circulation of the blood, and showing him the vessels, discovered by Pecquet, through which the chyle is conveyed to the right ventricle of the heart.”[20]
He comments, “Yet notwithstanding their profound ignorance of the subject, they affirm that the number of veins in the human body is five thousand, neither more nor less; just as if they had carefully reckoned them.”[21] From these observations, it becomes apparent to the modern readers that Indian medical practices were ruefully lacking anatomical knowledge of the body on the one hand, and adhering to the unquestionable authority of scriptures. “The Immoveable or Immutable has sent to them four books, to which they name of beids, a word signifying science, because according to them, these books comprehend all the sciences.”[22] He became weary of explaining the recent discoveries of Harvey and Pecquet in anatomy and the philosophy of Gassendi.
Being a learned physician and pursuing his studies in the energetic scientific milieu of France, he began to explore the problems at the level of philosophy. In another important observation, he notes, “In this quiet and regular manner their time glides away; no one aspiring after any improvement in the condition of life wherein he happens to be born. The embroiderer brings up his son as an embroiderer, the son of a goldsmith becomes a goldsmith, and a physician of the city educates his son for a physician. No one marries but in his own trade or profession; and this custom is observed almost as rigidly by Mahometans as by the Gentiles, to whom it is expressly enjoined by their law.”[23] He adds, “no circumstance can happen below, which is not written above.”[24] In Benares, “the Athens of India”, he found “no colleges or regular classes, as in our universities, but resembles rather the schools of the ancients…”[25]
With all these analyses, Bernier looks into the problem of modern academic institutions in India. No other traveller of the 17th century has made such a profound observation. “A profound and universal ignorance is the natural consequence of such a state of society as I have endeavoured to describe. Is it possible to establish in Hindoustan academies and colleges properly endowed? Where shall we seek for founders or, should they be found, where are the scholars? Where the individuals whose property is sufficient to support their children at college? or, if such individuals exist, who would venture to display so clear a proof of wealth?”[26] Finally, he relates education with employment, “Lastly, if any persons should be tempted to commit this great imprudence, yet where are the benefices, the employments, the offices of trust and dignity, that require ability and science and are calculated to excite the emulation and the hopes of the young student?”[27] It can be extrapolated that no proper scientific education or academia that can pursue medical or surgical training is inconceivable at that period in India.
Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605 – July 1689) was a traveler and trader. The reasons for superiority of European surgeons can be palpably traced from his writings. We find the name of Pitre de Lan who was asked for bleeding the King “as his physicians had directed”[28] He then bled the King under the tongue in four places. He did it so skillfully that “on weighing the blood with the basins, he found that he had drawn eight ounces exactly.”[29] This particular act of bleeding coming out accurate anatomical knowledge was lacking in Indian physicians “because, as for surgery, the people of the country understand nothing about it.”
(Tavernier)
He makes an altogether different interesting observation. “It should be noted that in all the countries we have just passed through, both in the Kingdom of Carnatic and the Kingdoms of Golkonda and Bijapur, there are hardly any physicians except those in the services of the Kings and Princes.”[30] For the common people “when the rains have fallen and it is season for collecting plants, mothers of families may be seen going out in the mornings from the towns and villages to collect simples which they know to be proper for the diseases which occur in a family.”[31] He adds, “It is true that in good towns there are generally one or two men who have some knowledge of medicine…They first feel the pulse, and when giving medicine, for which they take only the value of two farthings, they mumble some words between their teeth.”[32]
We come to understand a few things – (1) Indian people, especially physicians, are deficient in surgical knowledge; (2) local people are not usually cared for by any learned physician and they almost solely depend on domestic medicine prepared by the mothers; and (3) after feeling pulse and during the act of giving medicine to the patient some incomprehensible words are mumbled. The last act adds some supernatural connotation to the whole procedure.
Niccolao Manucci (1639–1717) was a self-trained physician. He worked in the Mughal court. He worked in the service of Dara Shikoh, Shah Alam, Raja Jai Singh and Kirat Singh. His major work is Storia do Mogor or Mogul India, 1653-1708, in three volumes. He finds, “The ordinary diseases of this country are mort-de-chien (cholera) – that is, colic of the bowels with vomiting and laxity – and this complaint is the death of many. The best remedy is to burn with a red-hot iron the middle of the heel until the heat is felt, and by this the pain is allayed and the discharge and vomiting stopped.”[33]
Other complaints are spleen, the itch, and fevers. He concludes, “This is why the residents of Goa have bad complexions, although they have abundance of food, principally fruits.”[34] The Governor of the city where Manucci was staying had been suffering from fistula. “None of the Europeans living in the fort knew the proper treatment, nor was there any Mahomedan surgeon who would venture to deal with the case.”[35] In a short time he was cured by Manucci. He also took recourse to chicaneries. to conceal his incompetence as a physician.[36]
He describes the method of making enemas in an indigenous way. The enemas administered to him at Goa “were concocted of mallows, wild endive, and some other herbs, with a trifle of bran, black sugar, salt, olive oil, and Canna fistula. I sent out for these things, and made a concoction. But the greatest difficulty was to get the instrument. For this I sent and got a cow’s udder, and for the tube I took a piece of cane from a huqqah snake, through which the Mahomedans draw their tobacco. I managed to put these together in a manner that would serve. I placed the concoction into the udder, and fastened the tube to it.”[37]
He successfully bled a princess and bled her regularly twice a year.[38] He observes, “It should be understood that before a European can acquire the office of physician among these princes he must be put to the proof for a long time, for they are extremely distrustful and nice in such matters. Every month the princesses and the ladies have themselves bled, which is done in the way I have above described. It is just the same when they want themselves bled in the foot, or have any wound or fistula dressed.”[39] He provides a long list of Persian physicians appointed at the Royal court. They cured hot complaints with cooling remedies. However, few of them, he comments, “know anything about, or can cure, the stone, paralysis, apoplexy, dropsy, anaemia, malignant fevers, or other complaints. They follow the ancient books of medicine, which say a great deal, but tell very little.”[40]
Manucci was perhaps the first traveller to inform about Indian rhinoplasty. When the campaign against Bijapur started in 1670 (?1686) “the men of Bijapur caught any unhappy persons belonging to the Moguls who had gone out to cut grass or collect straw or do some other service, they did not kill them but cut off their noses.”[41] But the surgeons of that region cut the skin of the forehead above the eyebrows, and made it fall down over the wounds on the nose. “In a short time the wounds heal up, some obstacle being placed beneath to allow of respiration. I saw many persons with such noses, and they were not so disfigured as they would have been without any nose at all, but they bore between their eyebrows the mark of the incision.”[42]
It transpires from this description that this act of rhinoplasty was a common practice in vogue as he saw many persons with such noses. The question appears – how to reconcile the fact of utter lack of anatomical knowledge with such feat of special surgery.
(John Fryer)
John Fryer (1650-1733) matriculated at Trinity College in Cambridge on 13 July 1664 and graduated Bachelor of Medicine in 1671. 11 September 1672, records his appointment as “a Chyrurgeon for Surat”. As we have seen before, Europeans would use Indian doctors for their medical complaints. Fryer gives an account of a Brahmin doctor at Surat who used to come everyday and “feels every Man’s Pulse in the Factory, and is often made use of for a Powder for Agues, which works as infallibly as the Peruvian Bark; it is a preparation of Natural Cinnaber.”[43]
He also makes us know, “Midwifery is in esteem among the Rich and Lazy only; the Poorer, while they are labouring or planting, go aside as if to do their Needs, deliver themselves with the Child, and lay it in a Clout or Hammock, and return to work again.”[44] It reminds us of similar rural Chinese practice of delivering a child, as depicted in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth.
He disrespectfully narrates the state of Indian medicine – “Their Philosophers maintain an Aristotelian Vacuity; nor are they quite ignorant of Medicks, though Anatomy is not approved, wherein they lean too much on Tradition, being able to give a very slender account of the Rational Part thereof.”[45] He describes the acts shown by a (Bengal) juggler. “I was promised to see a Fellow that cast up his Tripes by his Mouth, Stomach and all, shewing them to the Beholders…the first of which by Suction or drawing his Breath, so contarcted his lower Belly, that it had nothing left to support it, but fell flat to his Loins, the Midriff being forced into Thorax, and the muscles of the Abdomen as clearly marked out by the stiff Tendons of the Linea Alba, as by the most accurate Dissection could be made apparent, he moving each Row like living Columns by turns.”[46]
He explains “that while all the Contents of the Belly are moved upwards, all Respiration is expelled, only the voluntary Motion of Animal Spirits acts upon the Nerves (the Mind or Sole commanding them) while the Vital or Natural are compelled to the contrary.” The use of the term Animal Spirit connotes a mix up of humoral legacy with modern anatomical description.
We should take note of anatomical terms and details by a Cambridge-trained surgeon. What was natural act of jugglery of an Indian undergoes verbal dissection through his observation. “ After this I saw another Fellow of a good Habit of Body, that had taught himself by use to depress his Sternum, with the Serratus Posticus Inferior, Sacre lumbus, and Triangular Muscles, so that the Cartilaginous Substances of the Ribs], which Anatomists separate for Dissection of the Thorax, and throw it back over the Face…”[47] By such verbal autopsies sheer ignorance of native population is more poignantly laid bare and scientific authority and, in tandem, superiority of European knowledge is placed at the topmost rung of civilization.
He finds diseases reigning according to the seasons and enumerates afflictions by cough, catarrh, tumours of the mouth and throat, intermittent fevers, small pox, rheumatism, inflammation of the eyes, fluxes, apoplexies and all distempers of the brain as well as stomach.[48] “To Cup they use Ventosoes, without Sacrifications. They have good Escaroticks and Vesicatories, made by a certain Nut.”[49] He notices, “They are unskill’d in Anatomy, even those of the Moors who follow the Arabians, thinking it unlawful to dissect Human Bodies; whereupon Phlebotomy is not understood, they being ignorant how the Veins lye…Chirurgery is in as bad a plight, Amputation being an horrid thing…”[50]
After such self-evident observations, he provides interesting information. “The Dutch never permit the Natives to be taught any Eminent Art whereby they may become their competitors.”[51]
John Ovington (1653-1731) was an English priest who took the road of exile along with the king Jacques (1689) and was hired as a chaplain in the East India Company. He tells us, “In either a Disease, or any unlucky Casualties should happen to any in the Factory, the President has provided an Indian Doctor of Physick, and n English Surgeon to take care of them.”[52] To cure some types swelling of the body (?tumour) a particular kind of medicine is repeated “for three or four Days, the Humours sensibly assuaged, and in that time were all drawn off by so powerful a Purgation…the Swelling abated, and his skin fell, and hung loose about him like a Garment.”[53] The common distemper that destroyed the most in India was, according to him, was fevers. Though, to emphasize, it is never specified which sort of fever he was talking about.
He states, “It has been Cur’d by a Red-hot Iron clapt to the Heel of him that is sick, so close that it renders him uneasie by its nearness, whereby it leaves a Scar behind it.”[54] He mentions of indigenous remedy, “And nothing contributes more to the Recovery of the benumb’d Limbs, than frequenting the Humhums (?), which are here in great plenty.”[55] Again, “The general Ease and Cure which the White Powder in India gives to Feavers, makes that a very common and acceptable Receipt there; and it has, without very good Success, been administered in England, sent from thence by the Indian Physicians.”[56] He compares superior Chinese pulse reading to the Indian ones.[57]
Moreover, he mentions positively of Indian mode curing in case of snake bites.[58] He is of high opinion of the use of coconuts for many a cure. “It cures the Bloody Flux, the Pestilence, and Malignant Fevers, Pysons, Falling Sickness, Palsey, Convulsions, and Frightful Tremors of the Spirits…”[59]
Conclusion
The 17th century ushered in paradigmatic shift in European perception of Indian medicine. The days of simples, herbs and drugs ended. New knowledge of anatomy and experimental physiology put European medicine on a strong premise from which all other indigenous methods and practices could be judged, marginalized and assimilated whenever necessary into European medical practice. To stress upon, European medicine of that period gained its superiority from surgical excellence. Medical therapeutics, especially at this far off torrid zone, was rather inferior to the Indian ones. Their medicine had yet to see the advent of Hospital medicine in the Paris hospitals of the late 18th century. Fryer made a valuable comment, “But I believe rather we are here, as Exotick Plants brought home to us, not agreeable to the Soil…”[60] How these Exotic Plants made possible their hegemony over Indian medical knowledge systems will be gradually revealed in subsequent accounts of the travelers of the 18th and 19th centuries. We would also come to learn that these maneuvers did also signal “the invasion of an epistemological space”.[61]
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[1] Albert Camus, Between Hell and Reason, selected and translated, Alexandre de Gramont (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1991), 117.
[2] Anita Guerrini, “Archbald Pitcairn and Newtonian Medicine”, Medical History, 1987, 71: 70-83 (72).
[3] Garcia Da Orta, Colóquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da India, tr. Clements Markham (London: Henry Sotheran & Co., 1913), 46.
[4] Ibid, 78.
[5] Ibid 86-87.
[6] Ibid, 86.
[7] Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2004), 279.
[8] John Huyghen von Linschoten, The Voyage of John Huyghen von Linschoten to the East Indies. From the Old English Translation of 159.The First Book, tr. Arthur Coke Burnell, vol. 1 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1885), 230.
[9] Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, Vol. II (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1977), 28.
[10] Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology. And Ideologies of Western Dominance (New York: Cornell University Press, 1990), 22.
[11] M. N. Pearson, “The Thin End of the Wedge: Medical Relativities as a Paradigm of Early Modern Indian-European Relations,” Modern Asian Studies Feb. 1995, 29 (1): 141-170. Quoted on p. \170.
[12] Schiebinger, Plants and Empire, 7.
[13] Ibid, 5.
[14] Mary Louisse Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London, New York: Routledge, 1992), 30-31.
[15] Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire, trans., Irving Brock, Vol. I (London: William Pickering, 1826), 107.
[16] Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire A.D. 1636-1668, annotated by Archibald Constable (London: Oxford University Press, 1916), 338. [Hereafter, Travels, Constable]
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid, 339.
[21] Ibid. [Emphasis added]
[22] Bernier, Travels in the Mughal Empire, trans., Irving Brock, Vol. II, 32. Hereafter Travels.
[23] Travels, trans., Constable, 259.
[24] Travels, Vol. I, 180.
[25] Travels, Constable, 334.
[26] Ibid, 229.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, trans., Valentine Ball, Vol. I (London: MacMillan and Co., 1889), 301.
[29] Ibid, 302.
[30] Ibid, 300.
[31] Ibid, 300-301.
[32] Ibid, 301. [Emphasis added]
[33] Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor or Mogul India, 1653-1708, trans., William Irvine, Vol. II (London: John Murray, 1907), 169.
[34] Ibid, 169.
[35] Ibid, 97.
[36] Ibid, 39-40, 178.
[37] Ibid, 177.
[38] Ibid, 354-355.
[39] Ibid, 355.
[40] Ibid, 356. [Emphasis added]
[41] Ibid, 302.
[42] Ibid, 301.
[43] John Fryer, A New Account of East-India and Persia, in Eight Letters. Being Nine Years Travels, Begun 1672. And Finished 1681 (London: Robert Roberts Chiswell, 1698), 115.
[44] Ibid, 115.
[45] Ibid, 191.
[46] Ibid, 192.
[47] Ibid, 192.
[48] Ibid, 113-114.
[49] Ibid, 114.
[50] Ibid, 114.
[51] Ibid, 106.
[52] John Ovington, A Voyage to Suratt, In the Year 1689 (London: Jacob Jonson, 1696), 402.
[53] Ibid, 266.
[54] Ibid, 350.
[55] Ibid, 350.
[56] Ibid, 350-351.
[57] Ibid, 352.
[58] Ibid, 259-264.
[59] Ibid, 265.
[60] Fryer, A New Account of East-India and Persia, 69.
[61] Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996).
Another fantastic essay — in Joy jayanthi Rag – from Dr Jayanta Bhattachajyas unique style of presentation — wnere well known Historical truth, embraces scientific Medicine’s Epistemic irrefutable logic — tears off the Veil of obscurantic attempts of gltzy patchwork of a tomfoolery medicine to be presented to gullible fellow Citizens in the name of unverifiable stories of great past achievements — for pure Politico Economic game. Kudos to Jayanto — nirmalya majumder.