Article ID: CBB001451226

Travel Accounts and the Eighteenth Century: Indian Medicine and Surgery Through Travelling Gaze (2013)

unapi

he eighteenth century traveler-writers were mostly engaged with the new knowledge-building project of natural history, and travel narratives are filled with gentleman effort for naturalizing. The idea of progress, especially in eighteenth century England, was to captivate influential sections of British society. Technology, unlike today's understanding, in this era meant detailed or systematic examination rather than tools or invention. Depending on different cultural backgrounds, gap of time period of only one or two decades, and differentials in intellectual ability of perception/observations of the same kind of things very much varied amongst travelers. Travel writings of the previous centuries departed from its trajectory. Collections of curious observations on the manners, customs, usages, different languages, government, mythology, chronology, ancient and geography, ceremonies, religions, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, physics, natural history, commerce, arts and sciences crystallized into new domination, gradually ascending into the formation of a novel kind of secular social hierarchy. It was altogether unknown in India before colonial subjugation. In India, at this early colonial moment, the British grouped indigenous medicine with literature and the arts. It is consistent with the evolution of the concept and meaning of science in Europe. Oftentimes, there was epistemological mutation of medicine in the colony. Through the making of new kind of institutions, laws, commerce, economy, education, curricula, and social milieu European powers finally became successful to introduce its medical knowledge in India. The history of medicine in India was all set for an entirely different journey. This journey ushered in the historically new period of hospital medicine in India. This was yet to come up in the travel writings of the eighteenth * Independent Researcher, Tulsitala, P.O.: Raiganj, Dist: Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal - 733134 Email: drjayanta@gmail.com40 INDIAN JOURNAL OF HISTORY OF SCIENCE century. We would find those accounts gradually unfolding in the writings of the nineteenth century travelers.

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Authors & Contributors
Harrison, Mark
Schlein, Deborah
Wardaki, Marjan Sarwar
Rachel Winchcombe
Prakash, Vaidya Balendu
Johnson-Roehr, Susan N.
Concepts
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Travel; exploration
Colonialism
Medicine
Great Britain, colonies
India, civilization and culture
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
17th century
16th century
20th century, early
Early modern
Places
India
England
Great Britain
South America
Americas
Europe
Institutions
British East India Company
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
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