An Introduction

Ayurveda a Sanskrit word derived from two roots: ayur, which means life, and veda, which means knowledge. Knowledge arranged systematically with logic becomes science.

Over time, Ayurveda became the science of life. It has its root in ancient vedic literature and encompasses our entire life – the body, mind and spirit. It is clearly unique in this day and age to find a system of medicine that is over 5000 years old and still today one of the largest on the planet. Ayurvedic medicine, although in its infancy here in America, has over 300,000 Indian doctors in the All Indian Ayurvedic Congress, making it the largest medical organization in the world. Ayurveda focuses on prevention of illness and the body’s natural power of cure.

Western Medication

Medicine occupied a central place in Western scientific thought and activity in nineteenth-century India. The Colonial Medical Service was one of the principal scientific agencies in India during the Company period and for several decades thereafter. The Indian Medical Service owed its institutional origins neither to metropolitan models nor to indigenous precedents, but arose out of the medical and military requirements of early colonial rule. By mid-century, Western medicine had begun to shun such desperate remedies, but that did not necessarily promote a reconciliation with Indian medicine. The impact of British attitudes on indigenous medical ideas and practices can most clearly be seen in the case of smallpox. The history of malaria and its close association with medical topography were important in informing British and Indian attitudes towards environment, health and race, and in establishing the authority of medicine in representations of the self and the other. Like malaria, cholera was one of the most formidable diseases of nineteenth-century India.