The Thin End of the Wedge Medical Relativities as a Paradigm of Early Modem Indian-European Relations

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 1995, Pages 141-170

  Pearson, M N ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES   (Australia)

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EID: 84972168010     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X00012658     Document Type: Article

References (118)

1. See M. N. Pearson, Before Colonialism: Theories on Asians European Relations, 1500-1750 (Delhi, 1988), and ‘Merchants and States’, in
2. James D. Tracy (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires (New York, CUP, 1991), p. 41-116.
3. See Immanuel Wallerstein, ‘Incorporation of Indian Subcontinent into Capitalist World-Economy‘, Economic and Political Weekly, XXI (4 Jan. 1986), pp. 28 - 39 ; also published In Satish Chandra (ed.).
4. The Indian Ocean: Explorations in History, Commerce and Politics (New Delhi, 1987), pp. 222–253
5. The version here is focused on India, and is thus more accessible than the comparable study scattered through his The Modem World-System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730-1840s (New York, 1989).
6. See also S. Arasaratnam's fine Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650-1740 (Delhi, OUP, 1986);
7. Holden Furber's classic, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800 (Minneapolis, 1976);
8. Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton, 1985);
9. Ashin Das Gupta and M. N. Pearson (eds), India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800 (Calcutta, 1987).
10. Niels Steensgaard, ‘The Indian Ocean Network and the Emerging World-Economy, c.1500-1750’, in Chandra (ed.), The Indian Ocean, pp. 125-50;
11. Cf. Steensgaard, ‘Asian Trade and World-Economy from the 15th to 18th Centuries’, T. R. de Souza (ed.), Indo-Portuguese History: Old Issues, New Questions (New Delhi, 1985), pp. 225–35.
12. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ‘Asian Trade and European Affluence? Coromandel 1650-1740’, review article in Modern Asian Studies, XXII, 1 (Feb. 1988), pp. 179–88.
13. See Tracy (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires.
14. Arasaratnam, p. 137.
15. S. Subrahmanyam, ‘Persians, Pilgrims and Portuguese: the Travails of Masuli-patnam Shipping in the Western Indian Ocean, 1590-1665’, Modern Asian Studies, XXII, 3 (July 1988), pp. 503–30, and especially 524–30. The quotation is from p. 530.
16. Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1580–1800 (CUP, 1988), p. 117 ; a revised and amplified version was published In Tracy (ed.)
17. The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, pp. 161—195.
18. Irfan Habib, ‘Merchant Communities in Pre-colonial India’, in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires (CUP 1990), pp. 371–399.
19. David Arnold, ‘Introduction: Disease, Medicine and Empire’, in David Arnold (ed.), Imperial Health and Indigenous Societies (Manchester, 1988), p. 2.
20. Examples are P. D. Gaitonde, Portuguese Pioneers in India: Spotlight on Medicine (Bombay, 1983);
21. João Baptista Amancio Gracias, ‘Médicos Europeus em Goa e nas cortes Indianas nos séculos XVI a XVIII’, O Oriente Portugues, XXIV-XXV (1939), pp. 335-91; and the various compilations of
22. O. P. Jaggi: Western Medicine in India (3 vols, Delhi, Atma Ram and Sons, 1979 - 80);
23. O. P. Jaggi, Medicine in Medieval India, vol. VIII of History of Science and Technology in India (Delhi, Atma Ram and Sons, 1977) (on yunani medicine); and Indian System of Medicine (Delhi, 1974) (on ayurvedic medicine).
24. A good brief overview is K. K. Roy, ‘Early Relations between the British and Indian Medical Systems’, in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine (2 vols, London, 1974, Wellcome Institute), 697-703.
25. Apart from specific works cited in footnotes, in this section I have used as a basic reference Roderick E. McGrew, Encyclopedia of Medical History (London, Macmillan, 1985). I also found much curious information In Deborah Manley (ed.), The Guinness Book of Records 1492 (Guinness Publishing, 1992).
26. Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th—18th Century, vol. I, The Structures of Everyday Life, The Limits of the Possible (New York, 1979), pp. 78 - 88 ;
27. E. L. Jones, The European Miracle (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 140–1.
28. On plague, see McGrew, Encyclopedia of Medical History, s.v., and a useful survey of the literature by
29. R. S. Roberts‘The Question of the History of Plague’, in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine (2 vols, London, 1974, Wellcome Institute), II, 1291–4.
30. John Correia-Afonso (trans. and ed.), Intrepid Itinerant: Manuel Godinho and his Journey from India to Portugal in 1663 (Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 223, 224.
31. Ludovico di Varthema, The Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna from 1302 to 1508, ed. R. C. Temple (London, 1928), p. 63.
32. Generally on syphilis, see Ann G. Carmichael, ‘Syphilis and the Columbian Exchange: Was the New Disease really New?’, in Mario Gomes Marques and John Cule (eds), The Great Maritime Discoveries and World Health (Lisbon, 1991), pp. 187–200.
33. Norman G. Owen (ed.), Death and Disease in Southeast Asia: Explorations in Social, Medical and Demographic History (Singapore, OUP, 1987), introduction, pp. 4, 12.
34. For ecological imperialism, a somewhat biological determinist notion anyway, see Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, 1972), and Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (CUP, New York, 1986).
35. For useful general discussions, see Philip D. Curtin, Disease and Imperialism before the Nineteenth Century (Bell Library, University of Minnesota, 1990) (Bell Lecture no. 28).
36. David Arnold, ‘The Indian Ocean as a Disease Zone, 1500 - 1950 ’, South Asia, XIV 2 (1991), pp. 1–21.
37. Gaitonde, pp. 82-8
38. Julius Jolly, Indian Medicine, 2nd edn (New Delhi, 1977) [1st pub. 1901], p. 3.
39. For recent research on traditional Hindu medicine, see G. Jan Meulen-beld and Dominik Wujastyk (eds), Studies on Indian Medical History (Groningen, 1987).
40. H. D. Isaacs, ‘Some Clinical Methods used by the Arabs in the Middle Ages ’, in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine 2 vols, London, 1974, Wellcome Institute), I, 82 –87
41. The mixture in Persia was briefly noted by a traveller in 1637, who said: ‘In Physick, or Medicine, they follow the Maxims of Avicenna and their Physicians are all Galenists.’
42. Adam Olearius, The Voyages & Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia. Begun in the year MDCXXXIII and finish'd in MDCXXXIX…, trans.
43. John Davies (London, 1662), p. 338. Foryunani medicine in Persia in the seventeenth century
44. see Dr. John Fryer, A New Account of East India and Persia, ed. W. Crooke (London, 1909-1915), 3 vols, III, 97.
45. Olearius, p. 338.
46. See The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn, S.V. Djarrah [surgery].
47. Generally on all this, see A. L. Basham, The Wonder that was India (London, 1963), pp. 500– 502.
48. for an excellent summary, and also A. L. Basham (ed.), A Cultural History of India (Oxford, 1975) pp. 48, 147– 50, 438. See also a good survey in Edwin H. Ackerknecht, A Short History of Medicine (Baltimore, 1982), pp. 35– 43.
49. For Indian Muslim medicine, see S. M. Ikram, Muslim Rule in India and Pakistan (Lahore, 1966), 2nd edn, pp. 181– 183.
50. For Ibn Sina's influence on Indian medicine, see Hakim Abdul Hameed and Hakim Abdul Bari,‘Impact of Ibn Sina's Medical Works in India’, Studies in History of Medicine, VIII (1984), pp. 1–12.
51. Quoted in Gaitonde, p. 101.
52. Babur, Babur-Nama, trans. A. S. Beveridge (New Delhi, 1970), pp. 82, 106–109, 169–70, 246, 399, 400, 511, 543, 608, 657 660.
53. Jahangir, The Tuzuk-i Jahangiri, trans. A. Rogers, ed. H. Beveridge (Delhi, 1968), 2 vols in 1, I, 330, 243; II, 12–13.
54. See a useful discussion in David Arnold,‘Smallpox and Colonial Medicine in Nineteenth-century India’, in Arnold (ed.), Imperial Health and Indigenous Societies pp. 46–7.
55. In the late sixteenth century Linschoten said that the‘plague hath never been in India,’ and his modern editor footnoted:‘Correct. The plague seems never to have extended beyond Scinde.’ (
56. J. H. van Linschoten, The Voyage of John Huyghen van Linschoten to the East Indies (London, 1885), 2 vols, I, 240 and fn.)
57. According to H. G. Rawlinson the first recorded instance of bubonic plague in India was in 1616 but, given Jahangir's familiarity with it, this seems to be far too late a date. Later in the century it was a great killer, raging, for example, in Surat for six years in the 1680s. It caused great mortality among Indians, but Europeans were miraculously exempt. See John Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, ed. H. G. Rawlinson (London, 1929), pp. 203–4 and fn.
58. Jahangir, I, 442, II, 65, 66–7.
59. The Voyage of Nicholas Downton (London, Hakluyt, 1938), p. 135 See pp. 135–6 for an affecting account of a death from the‘bloudy fluxe.’
60. John Browne letter of 30May1616 In William Foster (ed.), Letters Received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East (London, 1896–1902), 6 vols, IV, 106–7.
61. Edward Terry In W. Foster (ed.), Early Travels in India, 1583-1619 (Delhi, 1968), p. 310.
62. Françis Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 1656– 1668, trans. and ed. A. Constable and V. Smith (London, 1914), pp. 253–4, 338–9. These pages constitute an excellent account of Indian medicine by an informed and experienced observer.
63. In the process a much richer medical world has been uncovered.’ Andrew Wear (ed.), Medicine in Society: Historical Essays (CUP, 1992), introduction, p. 2.
64. Correia-Afonso, Godinho, 38; Linschoten, I, 235–6.
65. For the claim that nine-teenth-century cholera was new, see Arnold,‘The Indian Ocean as a Disease Zone’, pp. 7–8.
66. The vexed matter of the newness of cholera in the nineteenth century is too complex to be gone into here, but certainly cholera takes various forms, and it is my understanding that a disease which produced death so quickly from diarrhoea and dehydration can be nothing but some sort of cholera. It is also worth noting that the‘bloody flux’ was not cholera, as this disease does not produce blood in the stools.
67. John Ovington, pp. 204–5. These accounts point to the Europeans using the hot-iron method as a cure, but an account from the 1750s seems to say this was an Indian remedy, though the observer still thought it worked quite well:‘There is likewise known on the Malabar-coast chiefly, a most violent disorder they call the Mordechin, which seizes the patient with such fury of purging, vomiting and tormina [?] of the intestines, that it will often carry him off in thirty hours. For this the physicians among the natives know no more efiectuall remedy, than the actual cautery applied to the soles of the feet, the powerful revulsion of which rarely fails of a salutary efficacy.’
68. John Henry Grose, A Voyage to the East Indies 1548 to which is added a Journey from Aleppo to Busserah over the Desert, by Mr. Charmichael, 2nd English edn 2 vols (London, 1772), I, 250.
69. Denis Kincaid, British Social Life in India, 1608-1937 (London, 1973), p. 37.
70. Niccolao Manucci, Storia do Mogor, or Mogul India (Calcutta, 1966–1967), 4 vols, III, 114, 117.
71. He notes on II, 90, that he simply took up doctoring because the demand was there:‘little by little I began to turn myself into a physician…’.
72. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, trans. V. Ball and W. Crooke (New Delhi, 1977), 2 vols, I, 240.
73. Abbé Carré, The Travels of the Abbe Carre in India and the Near East, 1672– 1674 London, Hakluyt, 1947–1948), 3 vols, p. 271.
74. Respectively Letters Received, I, 286, III, 4, and Correia-Afonso, Godinho, p. 37.
75. John Correia-Afonso,‘On the Fourth Centenary of Filippo Sassetti (1540-1588): Scientific Observations from Cochin’, Indica, XXVI (1989), pp. 15–24, esp. p. 19.
76. Fryer, I, 180.
77. David Arnold,‘Occidental Therapeutics and Oriental Bodies: Bengal, 1800-1860’, typescript of a paper read at a subaltern studies conference, Calcutta, December 1989. An amplified version of this paper will appear as part of David Arnold, Colonising the Body (Berkeley, 1993).
78. Ikram, p. 183.
79. D. S. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. II, book 3 (Chicago, 1977), p. 424.
80. Careri In S. N. Sen (ed.), Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri (New Delhi, 1949), p. 162.
81. Luillier-Lagaudiers, Nouveau voyage aux grandes Indes, avec une introduction pour le commerce des Indes Orientals, et la description de plusieurs isles, villes,& rivieres, Thistoire des plantes& des animaus qu'ony trouve; avec un traite des maladies particulieres aux pays orientaux, et dans la Route, et de leurs remedes par Mr. D. L. F., Docteur en Medecine, qui a voyagé et sejourné dans les principales Villes des Indes Orientales, [pp. 199–236], Rotterdam, 1726. The quotation is from Mr. DLF, p. 213.
82. François Pyrard de Laval, The Voyage of Franqois Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, vol. II (London, 1888), p. 13.
83. Georg Schurhammer, Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, vol. II, India (Rome, 1977). p. 96.
84. Abbé Carré, Travels, pp. 284–5.
85. Tavernier, Travels, I, 160–1.
86. Ovington, pp. 205–6. Yet the hostile Dr Fryer could claim that‘the Urine they will not look on.’ Fryer, I, 287.
87. Mr. DLF in Luillier, pp. 216–17.
88. Fryer, I, 288. It is another good example of Fryer's biased attitude that he tells on the previous page that Indian doctors‘pretend to understand the pulse…’ yet now it seems all the English in Surat trusted this doctor to do exactly this. The matter is complicated, for Ovington at the same time and place also claimed‘I could
89. Abbé Carré, Travels, p. 345.
90. Ovington, p. 205.
91. Correia-Afonso, Godinho, p. 70.
92. T. J. S. Patterson,‘The Transmission of Indian Surgical Techniques to Europe at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine, 2 vols (London, 1974, Wellcome Institute), I, 694–6.
93. For a good discussion, see Walter Pagel,‘Paracelsus: Traditionalism and Medieval Sources’, In Lloyd G. Stevenson and Robert P. Multhauf (eds), Medicine, Science and Culture (Baltimore, 1968), pp. 51–75.
94. Andrew Wear,‘Introduction’, in Andrew Wear (ed.), Medicine in Society, p. 5. See
95. also on these general changes other articles In this excellent collection, and two other compilations: Andrew Wear, Roger French and I. M. Lonie (eds), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century (CUP, 1985).
96. and Roger French and Andrew Wear (eds), The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (CUP, 1989).
97. For the fifteenth century, see a short useful study by Roger French :‘Medicine in Western Europe during the Fifteenth Century’, in Mario Gomes Marques and John Cule (eds), The Great Maritime Discoveries and World Health, pp. 39–54.
98. Sir George Clark, A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London (Oxford, 1964–1966), 2 vols, I, 61, 337.
99. Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1989), pp. 6, 21–2.
100. Arnold,‘Introduction’, p. 11.
101. Arnold,‘Occidental Therapeutics and Oriental Bodies’.
102. Bernier, pp. 253–4, 338–9.
103. Clements Markham, Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India by Garcia da Orta[a translation of Conde de Ficalho, Lisbon, 1891–5] (London, 1913), no. 36.
104. See, as one more example to add to those already quoted from, Fryer in the text, Fryer, I, 285–6 where he begins a long description of disease in Surat by saying‘The Diseases reign according to the Seasons, the North blowing, Bodies are rendered firm, solid and active by exhausting the Serous Humours.,’
105. In fairness, however, it must be noted that some diseases are seasonal in India. Cholera is most prevalent in the rainy season. Smallpox spreads better in dry weather, that is, from February to May, which is also the time of much travelling for pilgrimage and weddings in India. See Arnold,‘Smallpox and Colonial Medicine’, pp. 46–7.
106. Fryer, I, 287.
107. Fryer, III, 94.
108. Olearius, p. 338.
109. Manucci, II, 333.
110. Mr. DLF in Luillier, p. 213.
111. Olearius, p. 338.
112. Fryer, III, 96.
113. Abbé Carré, pp. 284–5.
114. Jadunath Sarkar, Studies in Aurangzib's Reign, 3rd edn (London, 1989), p. 56.
115. Fryer, I, 286. I am planning a separate study of the professionalization of medicine in Portuguese Goa.
116. Ovington, p. 205. David Arnold tells me that in the first half of the nineteenth century bleeding, well on the wane in Europe, was all the rage in India, for it was thought that drastic remedies were needed in such tropical places. Personal communication from Prof. Arnold.
117. Fryer, III, 95.
118. Mr. DLF in Luillier, p. 215.