Writing on the Body: Indigenous Medicine and Bangla Periodicals (1850-1901)

Abstract

This paper tries to engage with the discursive construction of the diseased/healthy native body in the essays on health and medicine published in Bangla periodicals in the second half of the nineteenth century like Bibidhartho Sangraha, Chikitsa Sammelani, Rahasya Sandarbhya, Shwasthya, Chikitsak o Somalochak and so on. I have attempted to show how the discourses on indigeneous medicine and the diseased/ healthy body of the native in these essays is a product of contradictory forces – the desire to posit the “difference” vis-a-vis the Western medical discourses and the anxiety of establishing the “scientificity” of indigeneous medicine, particularly Ayurveda. With a focus on textual instances drawn from these essays I have argued how these writings can be seen as an attempt to create a counter discourse against the pathologisation of space and the native body in early to mid-nineteenth century colonial medical discourses.