'West has always benefited from Indian medicine'

[Guest guest]

This article is in the Times of India On-line today, May 30th 2001. Does

anyone know the contact for the scholar mentioned, namely Timothy Walker?

 

'West has always benefited from Indian medicine'

PANAJI: If you thought the benefits of medicine flowed into India via a

one-way street, American researcher Timothy Walker would like to convince

you that is not the case. This researcher of early European colonial history

is currently scouring the archives of Goa to show how Indian medicine

influenced the West.

"Indian medicine's influence on Portugal was fairly wide. You had echoes of

Indian or ayurvedic practices that come into Portuguese usage. And you can

see those echoes reflected in the medicines that Portuguese physicians and

surgeons are supplying and prescribing for patients in Indian hospitals and

infirmaries," Walker said.

What got him particularly interested is the differences between "popular"

and "university trained" medicine. "For my doctoral program, I focused on

early modern Europe and colonial America. My dissertation work was on

Portugal in the 17th and 18th century. I looked at how popular medicine was

being oppressed by licensed physicians and surgeons," he says.

In turn, he got led to India "because at that time a lot of the medicines

coming out of India were being shipped to Portugal." Finally, he began

looking how Indian medicine influenced European medicine, via Portugal - the

earliest European colonial power in Asia.

Goa has one of the richest archives of early colonial history, because the

Portuguese settled here in the early 16th century. Walker is locating

interesting examples of drugs that were shipped out to Portugal in early

colonial times.

Indian influences are also noticeable in drugs in Portuguese pharmacies.

"You can see it (the influence of Indian medicine on the west) thorough

documentation from the 17th and 18th century," says Walker.

Tamarind, for example, is a plant widely used in ayurveda. It is applied in

Portuguese hospitals. It is used as a cooling agent, in combination with

other medicinal plants to help the absorption of those plants and it is used

in a poultice, placed on the skin.

Early Portuguese colonies in India proved to be the first meeting grounds

for the east and the west, particularly Goa and the enclaves of Daman and

Diu around the coastline of present day Gujarat, he says.

There's a lot of scholarship in the west that speaks of the way Western

medicine was brought to the east, and of how 'scientific' medicine was

taught to Indian people. But what is often not so strongly appreciated is

how much the West learnt from the east," he points out.

Walker says he has been able to locate documents that show the extent of

Portuguese buying medicines from local merchants and traders. "So you have a

lot of opportunities for shared medical knowledge, which I don't think was

the same case with other colonial powers that were in India at the time.

"In terms of documentation, you have a real gem here in Panjim. He points

out there were 12,000 to 15,000 volumes of material that relatively are in

very good condition. It has been well preserved and well catalogued.

"This probably is the best source of documentation for people who want to

look at this whole question of the West meeting the east specially in the

early stages." (IANS)

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[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "Rajiv Malhotra" <rajiv.malhotra@a...> wrote:

> This article is in the Times of India On-line today, May 30th 2001.

>Does anyone know the contact for the scholar mentioned, namely

>Timothy Walker?

 

Harvard university library has :

 

Henrique Henriques (1520-1600)

retrato del perfecto medico.

 

This book will have some interesting medical herbs, info, etc.,

(like the c. 1600CE Latin Hortus Malabaricus from Kerala)

or Ayurveda info.

 

Dr. D. Wujastyk will know lot more.

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan