Studies on Indian Medical History

This volume of studies presents the papers given at the second workshop of the European Ayurvedic Society, a group which was formed in Groningen in 1983. The volume is thus a sequel to Proceedings of the international workshop on priorities in the study of Indian medicine. The workshop was held over period of three days in September 1985, in the congenial surroundings of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, and it provided a splendid opportunity for scholars in the field of Indian medical history to meet in one place, and to share the latest research in their respective area.

The studies here collected present an unusually wide variety of approaches to the study of the healing arts in India. The historical sources used rage from ancient Sanskrit manuscripts and Tibetan blockprints, through nineteenth century Indian newspapers and government reports, to conversations held in the consulting rooms of contemporary Ayurvedic doctors. While each approach is both valid and valuable in its own terms, their combination in the medical history which transcends the barriers between scholarly disciplines and gives the reader some sense of the vastness of the subject.

The book is divided into three complementary parts: 'The reflects both a division in the source materials, and the different scholarly skills required to exploit them, those of the Indologist, the historian, and the medical anthropologist and pharmacognosist.

About The Author:

Gerrit Jan Meulenbeld was born in 1928, in Borne (Netherlands). After studying medicine and Sanskrit at the State University of Utrecht (1946-1954) he specialized in psychiatry (1956-1961) and psychotherapy. He was a member of the psychiatric staff of the Deltaziekenhuis (Portugal) during the years 1961-1978. In 1978, he joined the psychiatric staff of the Dr S. van Mesdagkliniek (Groningen); at the same time he began teaching Sanskrit and Ayurveda at the Institute of Indian Studies of the State University of Groningen, where he remained on the staff of until 1986. He is the author of a doctoral thesis on the Madhavanidana, published in 1974, and of several articles on various aspects of Sanskrit medical literature.

Dominik Wujastyk was born in London, and spent much of his childhood in Africa and Malta. He currently works at the Wellcome Library in London, where he is a curator of Sanskrit manuscripts. His monograph publications include Metarules of Paninian Grammar (1993) and The Roots of Ayurveda (1998).