Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T03:52:26.552Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Rethinking the History of Medicine in Asia: Hakim Mohammed Said and the Society for the Promotion of Eastern Medicine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2008

Get access

Abstract

In 1963 Hakim Mohammed Said took a Pakistani delegation from the Society for the Promotion of Eastern Medicine on a monthlong trip to China to meet with and learn from practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This essay focuses on Said's interpretation of the history of medicine in Asia, which was inspired by this trip and informed by a broad, global understanding of how Unani medicine developed from the eighth century to the present. Said's advocacy of Eastern Medicine provides a way to think about the history of medicine and medical revitalization that is not limited by colonial, postcolonial, or nationalist assumptions and priorities.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Adams, Vincanne. 2002. “Randomized Controlled Crime: Postcolonial Science in Alternative Medicine Research.” Social Studies of Science 32 (5–6): 659–90.Google Scholar
Alter, Joseph S., ed. 2005. Asian Medicine and Globalization. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alter, Joseph S. n.d. “Yoga in Asia—Mimetic History: Problems in the Location of Secret Knowledge.” Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Avicenna, [1930] 1984. The Canon of Medicine of Avicenna. Trans. Gruner, O. CameronBirmingham, AL: Classics of Medicine Library. [Written in the tenth century, earliest known copy 1052].Google Scholar
Bagchi, Prabodh Chandra. 1950. India and China: A Thousand Years of Cultural Relations. Bombay: Hind Kitabs.Google Scholar
Bode, Maarten. 2006. “Taking Traditional Knowledge to Market: The Commoditization of Indian Medicine.” Anthropology and Medicine 13 (3): 225–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Browne, Edward G. 2001. Islamic Medicine. New Delhi: Goodword Press. [Reprint of Arabian Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921]Google Scholar
Burbick, Joan. 1994. Healing the Republic: The Language of Health and the Culture of Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Burgel, J. Christoph. 1976. “Secular and Religious Features of Medieval Arabic Medicine.” In Asian Medical Systems, ed. Leslie, Charles, 4462. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Donald. 1926. Arabian Medicine and Its Influence on the Middle Ages. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co.Google Scholar
Chen, Nancy N. 2003. Breathing Spaces: Qigong, Psychiatry, and Healing in China. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Connor, Linda H., and Samuel, Geoffrey 2001. Healing Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian Societies. Westport, Conn.: Bergin and Garvey.Google Scholar
Croizier, Ralph C. 1968. Traditional Medicine in Modern China: Science, Nationalism, and the Tensions of Cultural Change. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croizier, Ralph C. 1970. “Medicine, Modernization, and Cultural Crisis in China and India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 12 (3): 275–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dols, Michael W., trans. 1984. Medieval Islamic Medicine: Ibn Ridwan's Treatise “On the Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt.” Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Elgood, Cyril. 1934. Medicine in Persia. New York: Hoeber.Google Scholar
Elgood, Cyril. 1951. A Medical History of Persia and the Eastern Caliphate from Earliest Times until the Year A.D. 1932. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elgood, Cyril. 1970. Safavid Medical Practice. London: Luzac and Co.Google Scholar
Farquhar, Judith. 1994. Knowing Practice: The Clinical Encounter in Chinese Medicine. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Gallagher, Nancy Elizabeth. 1983. Medicine and Power in Tunisia, 17901900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gutas, Dimitri. 1998. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbāsid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries). London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habib, S. Irfan. 2000. “Delhi Tibbiya College and Hakim Ajmal Khan's Crusade for Indigenous Medicine Systems in Late 19th and early 20th Century India.” In Science and Islamic Civilization, ed. Ihsanoglu, Ekmeleddin and Gunergun, Feza, 257–65. Istanbul: Research Center for Islamic History, Art and Culture.Google Scholar
Habbib, S. Irfan, and Raina, Dhruv 2005. “Reinventing Traditional Medicine: Method, Institutional Change and Medication in Late Colonial India.” In Asian Medicine and Globalization, ed. Alter, Joseph S., 6777. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hameed, A. Abdul. 1969. Physician-Authors of Greco-Arab Medicine in India. New Delhi: Institute of History of Medicine and Medical Research.Google Scholar
Hass, E. 1876. “Uber die Ursprünge der Indischen Medizin, mit besonderem Bezug auf Suśruta.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesellschaft 30:617–70.Google Scholar
Hilton-Simpson, Melville William. 1979. Arab Medicine and Surgery: A Study of the Healing Arts in Algeria. New York: AMS Press.Google Scholar
Hsu, Elizabeth. 1999. The Transmission of Chinese Medicine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jairazbhoy, Rafique Ali. 1963. Foreign Influences in Ancient India. New York: Asia Publishing House.Google Scholar
Janes, Craig R. 1995. The Transformations of Tibetan Medicine. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 9 (1): 639.Google Scholar
Khan, Muhammad Salim. 1986. Islamic Medicine. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Kumar, Deepak. 1995. Science and the Raj: 18571905. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kuriyama, Shigehisa. 1999. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Laderman, Carol. 1992. “A Welcoming Soil: Islamic Humoralism on the Malay Peninsula.” In Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge, ed. Leslie, Charles and Young, Allan, 272–88. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Langford, Jean. 2002. Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Leslie, Charles. 1976. “The Ambiguities of Medical Revivalism in Modern India.” In Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study, ed. Leslie, Charles, 356–67. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leslie, Charles. 1992. “Interpretations of Illness: Syncretism in Modern Ayurveda.” In Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge, ed. Leslie, Charles and Young, Allan, 177208. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Metcalf, Barbara D. 1985. “Nationalist Muslims in British India: The Case of Hakim Ajmal Khan.” Modern Asian Studies 19 (1): 128.Google Scholar
Meyerhof, Max. 1931. “Science and Medicine” In The Legacy of Islam, ed. Arnold, Thomas Walker and Guillaume, Sir Alfred, 311–55. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Meyerhof, Max. 1984. Studies in Medieval Arabic Medicine: Theory and Practice. London: Variorum Reprints.Google Scholar
Nizami, Zafar Ahmad. 1988. Hakim Ajmal Khan. New Delhi: Publications Division.Google Scholar
Rall, Jutta. 1970. Die Vier grossen Medizenshulen de Mongolen-Zeit. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Rashid, Sadia, D’Silva, Lily Ann and Bano, Zahid eds. 1999. Hakim Mohammed Said: Essays. Karachi: Hamdard Foundation Pakistan.Google Scholar
Razzack, Mohammed Abdur. 1987. Hakim Ajmal Khan, the Versatile Genius. New Delhi: Central Council for Research in Unani Medicine.Google Scholar
Rinpoche, Rechung. 1973. Tibetan Medicine. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Franz. 1990. Science and Medicine in Islam: A Collection of Essays. Aldershot: Gower.Google Scholar
Said, Hakim Mohammed. 1973. Al-Biruni's Book on Pharmacy and Materia Medica. Karachi: Hamdard Academy.Google Scholar
Said, Hakim Mohammed. 1976. Al-Tibb Al-Islami: A Brief Survey of the Development of Tibb (Medicine) during the Days of the Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H.) and in the Days of the Islamic Age, and Presented on the Occasion of the World of Islam Festival, London, April–June, 1976. Karachi: Hamdard Foundation Pakistan.Google Scholar
Said, Hakim Mohammed. 1982. Medicine in China. Karachi: Hamdard Foundation Pakistan.Google Scholar
Said, Hakim Mohammed. 1983a. Greco-Arab Concepts on Cardiovascular Disease. Karachi: Hamdard Foundation Pakistan.Google Scholar
Said, Hakim Mohammed. 1983b. Personalities Noble: Glimpses of Renowned Scientists and Thinkers of Muslim Era. Karachi: Hamdard Foundation Pakistan.Google Scholar
Said, Hakim Mohammed. 1991. Medieval Muslim Thinkers and Scientists. Delhi: Renaissance Publishing House.Google Scholar
Said, Hakim Mohammed. 1997. Yunani (Unani), Arabic, and Islamic Medicine and Pharmacy. Karachi: Hamdard Foundation Pakistan.Google Scholar
Savage-Smith, Emily. 1999. “The Exchange of Medical and Surgical Ideas between Europe and Islam.” In The Diffusion of Greco-Roman Medicine into the Middle East and the Caucasus, ed. Greppin, John A. C., Savage-Smith, Emily, and Gueriguian, John L., 2756. Delmar, N.Y.: Caravan Books.Google Scholar
Scheid, Volker. 2002. Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Shagdar, Bira. 2000. “The Mongol Empire in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: East West Relations.” In The Silk Roads: Highways of Culture and Commerce, ed. Elisseeff, Vadime, 127–44. New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Shahine, Y. A. 1976. The Arab Contribution to Medicine. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Siddiqi, Muhammad Zubayr. 1959. Studies in Arabic and Persian Medical Literature. Calcutta: Calcutta University.Google Scholar
Siraisi, Nancy G. 1987. Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ullman, Manfred. 1978. Islamic Medicine. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Unschuld, Paul U. 1985. Medicine in China: A History of Ideas. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Unschuld, Paul U. 1992. “Epistemological Issues and Changing Legitimation: Traditional Chinese Medicine in the Twentieth Century.” In Paths to Asian Medical Knowledge, ed. Leslie, Charles and Young, Allan, 4461. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Whipple, Allen Oldfather. 1967. The Role of Nestorians and Muslims in the History of Medicine. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wujastyk, Dominik. 1998. The Roots of Ayurveda. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Xu, Xoaqun. 1997. “‘National Essence’ vs. ‘Science’: Chinese Native Physicians' Fight for Legitimacy, 1912–37.” Modern Asian Studies 31 (4): 847–77.Google Scholar