Tag: India
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Nicolò Manucci, physician at the Court of Prince Shah Alam in seventeenth-century India
Stephen MartinThailand A teenage stowaway on a ship from Venice in 1653 had an unusual route into medicine. He was Nicolò Manucci (1638–1720, Fig 1). The earliest image of him gathering medicinal herbs in India is in the style of a Moghul imperial artist, probably done in Aurangabad, judging by the pink and brown color of…
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Decoding the death of Maharaja Pandu
B. Sadananda NaikKarnataka, India The Mahabharata is one of two great ancient Indian Sanskrit epics of Hinduism. It narrates the struggle between two groups of cousins in the Kurukshetra War, the Kaurava and Pandava princes. Maharaja Pandu, father of Pandavas, is one of the key figures in this epic. In the story, the premature death…
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Medical monuments in St. John’s Church, Kolkata
Stephen MartinThailand The British architecture of Kolkata, though by no means representative of modern India, has some extraordinary beauty. One of many outstanding sites is St. John’s Church, consecrated in 1787 (Fig 1) and based on James Gibbs’ St. Martin in the Fields in Trafalgar Square, London. In the Regency period, Michael Cheese was the…
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Xenotransplantation on Mount Kalilash
Devanshi Patel Rajkot, Gujarat, India Statue of Lord Ganesh during Ganesh Chaturthi. Photo by Mohnish Landge on Unsplash. According to Hindu mythology, Mount Kalilash in the Himalayas is the abode of Lord Shiva and his consort Parvati, along with their children Kartikeya and Ganesh.1 The latter son is the elephant-headed god of beginnings, intellectuals,…
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An uneasy relationship
P. Ravi Shankar Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Photo by lil artsy on Pexels My paternal grandmother lived for nearly ninety-three years. She was a strong woman who faced life with courage and dignity. She developed some medical conditions later in life but was active, could carry out her activities of daily living, and lived a…
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The history of Indian medicine and its impact on modern practice
Kahan Mehta Gotri, Vadodara, India Figure 1. The Ashwini Kumars. Image by Carly Bertn and Mark Cartwright, World History Encyclopedia. Based on Wikimedia image. CC BY-SA 4.0. India has a rich tradition of medicine that has evolved over the centuries. One such medical practice is Ayurveda, a system that has been used in India…
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Menstrual health in early Indian medical tradition
Benjamin Darkwa Edmonton, Canada Introduction Figure 1. Medical tangka: synopsis of the three humors. Romio Shrestha. Courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, 70.3/ 5479. As one of the oldest medical traditions, Ayurveda has existed for about two thousand years.1 Caraka and Susruta are the most famous medical compendiums of…
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Using art to educate about breast cancer
Viney KirpalIndia The World Health Organization Global Cancer Observatory states that in India in 2020, more than 178,361 new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in women.1 Some of these cases, of which 90,408 were fatal, could have been diagnosed and treated earlier, but a lack of awareness persists throughout the country. Comparatively, in the…
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India’s oldest medical schools
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom 15 August 2022 marked the 75th anniversary of Indian independence from British rule. Since independence, the Indian medical diaspora has successfully settled in countries around the world and contributed greatly to their health care systems. Outside India, few are familiar with the history of modern Indian medicine. India was long…