INTRODUCTION

Early civilizations were characterized by a growth in specialized knowledge. Natural, supernatural, and social realms were gradually differentiated – but not totally separated (that had to await modern times). This in turn allowed for empiricism (the development of science, including medicine). The corollary of the development of specialized knowledge was the development of professional classes. In India we have records for these developments after the second round of urbanization, which occurred from approximately 800 BCE. In the texts of the classical period (600 BCE–600), we find glimpses of new professional self-consciousness, discourses about the superiority of empirical medicine and its elite practitioners (as distinguished from quacks), and concerns about the public image of the profession (as technically competent, nonexploitative, and model citizen). We find some attempts to ensure group control of the new physicians beginning with their apprenticeship and the taking of oaths (Hinduism) or indirect regulation by the general observance of monastic rules including the required monthly confessions (Buddhism). The discourses of practitioners also describe model nurses and model patients, and who should have access to medicine.

Despite the development of empirical medicine, the discourses of physicians show the model physician to be a spiritual man. The Hindu view of this was directed to the married householder, either the brāhmaṇa physician who received gifts (and thus his livelihood) for his skills or other physicians who were paid for their expertise.