In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 5 Health and Medicine in British India and Dutch Indies: A Comparative Study DEEPAK KUMAR India and Indonesia provide a striking example of similarity and contrast . In both countries, their famed tropical riches attracted foreign intervention and both fell to colonization. Health was considered crucial in both countries and both had a medical tradition of their own. Western medicine, on the other hand, moved overseas riding the colonial wave. It became an integral part of the colonial project. Recent scholarship considers Western medicine "imperialist" both metaphorically and literally, and "as a form of knowledge and as a practice" (Cunningham and Andrews 1997; D. Kumar 1995, 2001; MacLeod and Lewis 1988). There is, however, a note of caution. Colonial medical discourse as a "discourse of power" may not leave sufficient room for the many discursive elements which are present in the colonial medical writings and represent insecurity, amazement, curiosity and frustration (Van Heteran 1996). Heterogeneity must be properly acknowledged and differences be explored. A medical practitioner in a colony had to perform a variety of functions: surgeon, military man, explorer, naturalist, or teacher as exigencies demanded. The practitioner had to work for or address to colleagues, administrators, and patients simultaneously or separately. The scope of intervention was enormous and the methods not fixed. The objectives were predominantly political (extension and consolidation of the empire), yet not always so. They could at the same time be partially evangelical, philanthropic, or economic. Colonial practices did differ in different politico-cultural theaters. But was this true for colonial medical practices as well? What attempts were made outside Europe to reconcile the older discourse of body humors and environmental miasmas with the new language of microbes and germs? What role did the "peripherals" play? Could a synergetic relationship between the core and periphery develop? Some explanations may be found in the evolu- Health and Medicine in British India and the Dutch Indies 79 tion of medical structures, patterns of medical education and research, and in their interactions with the local and the traditional. The Beginnings During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost every ship that sailed under the European East India companies had a surgeon-naturalist on board. They were products of scientific institutions and represented an emerging cosmopolitan medical system which stressed scientific causality. Epistemologically they were Galenic and not radically different from the Asian systems. The Indian Ayurvedic system was based on three humors instead of the Galenic four and the six in Chinese medicine . Herbal healers and shamans were found in every society. But the medico-religious side of Asian medical practices, such as incantations and amulets, attracted Western derision. Pearson makes a forceful plea not to ridicule the folk medical practices of the East. He finds not only healthy interaction in early Portuguese Goa but considerable European dependence on indigenous medical practitioners in certain kinds of ailments (Pearson 1989: 33). Garcia de Orta, for example, ,vas the first major naturalist to study the medicinal plants and drugs used in the East. But he could not build a new syncretic medical paradigm based on his Asian experiences, thus falling short of making a dent into the age-old Hippocratic-Galenic foundations of Western medicine. Similarly, the Dutch incursions in East Asia helped create a "Dutch School" of physicians as opposed to the traditional "Chinese school." Peter Boomgaard lists a number of Dutch physicians in the employment of the Japanese, Siamese, and Bolivian ruling classes (Boomgaard 1996: 42-64). There did occur a give and take. In South Asia the traditional healers had learned bleeding and phlebotomy from the Europeans, while the latter borrowed rhinoplasty from India. In East Asia, the Europeans learned moxibustion and acupuncture whereas Asians received modern anatomy, surgery, and hospitals . The two had similar magical/humoral pasts, but Western medicine moved toward specialty and "superiority" with the discoveries of Vesalius and Harvey. The ultimate separation was accomplished by the germ theory of disease in the 1880s. Until then, Europeans believed in "invisible miasmata" as causing diseases whereas the Asian folk-healers held invisible "evil spirits" responsible. It was the microscope which could finally drive away both the invisible spirits and the invisible miasmas. But in the process any possibility of a "syncretic" medicine was lost. The Two Cultures From the Indian point of view, the first half of the nineteenth century was a period of looking for fresh opportunities and acquiring new 80 Deepak Kumar knowledge. Syncretism, not revivalism, was the agenda. Even among the British officials there...

Share