THE BENGALI CONTEXT - CCRAS

Bull. Ind. lnst. Hist. Med. Vol. XXI. pp. 17 to 60

THE BENGALI CONTEXT

ABSTRACT

DONALD WARREN·

From the "Scientific-face" standpoint. homoeopathy in India reallybegan with the pivotal figure of Mahendra Lal Sircar {1833-1904). Bengalihorno eopathv, itself originally secularist and revealing much the same'scientific face' which the English old Guard showed. The essentialistlineaments of the traditional Bengali mentality were readily discernible inthe comparatively consistent way that Dutt. Bhattacharya and Kanjilal alldealt with the 'German Medicine' •..•.. though growing interest Mahendralalevinced for certain aspects of Ayurvedic medicine and in the convoluteddefence Sarkar fashioned for vital force. Even so, and despite their diffe-rential approaches to Hahnemann's psychopharmacology, those 'bhed relok'who served the logic of Bacon and those who reverenced the wisdom ofAyurvedic doctors concurred in one perception of the founder: he really didrediscover truths known in ancient India. Homoeopathically speaking, theBengali and American mentalities •...•.••. otherwise quite dissimilar •.••.....happened to coincide during the short span of a decade, 1870·80.

From the "scientific-face" stand-point. homoeopathy in India reallybegan with the pivotal figure ofMahendra Lal Sircar (1833 - 1904).hereafter referred to as Mahendra orMahendrala/. In as much as his bio-grapher made no attempt at contex-tualizatlon. the historian has to cate-gorize him bhadralok, which is tosay, he was a colonial product of themoralizing liberal doctrine of Britishimperialism. The Anglo-I ndian (usedhere in the old sense) and Bengaliteachers who educated him had their

theological beliefs corroded by thebiological and geological discoveriesof the 1850's. It is likely his mastersat the Calcutta College of Medicineshared the pertinent Raj appraisal:physical science functions as "proofof the gulf existing between Englishand Indians rather than a possiblemeans of abridging [sic] it.!" Theirmost promlslnq graduate (1863). Dr.Mahendralal Sircar, was to devotehis professional life to disproving theadage. He had the highest academiccredentials and bright prospects in

* 12, It\test83rd Street, New York-10024.1. Hutchins? 119.

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the British Medical Association, Ben-gali Branch. He forfeited a measureof respect by converting to "theGerman medicine." but bounded backand began in 1876) to beat the drumin the two societies. the bbedretokand the Anglo-Indian, for an all-India science institute he was laterto found (1869). Thus in the litera-ture written by the intelligentsia, theidentity of Mahendralal gets definedmore often by reference to his culti-vation of the natural sciences in Indiathan to his homoeopath finding rolethere.

To most Anqlo-Jndf ans. exceptingthe sale Viceroy Lord Ripon whohappened to be a lay homoeopath,Dr. Mahendralal's espousal of theHahnemannian system did little tounstick the received wisdom : theSaxon s "discovery" of infinitesimaldosing came down to just anotherGermanic spiritualist philosophy,hardly the positivistic sort of thera-peutics one would expect a progres-sive physician to practise by. In theend; Mahendralal lost some of theoptimism he expressed in 1877 whenhe wrote: "the dignity of Englishrule would acquire increased lustre[through Its will] to effect the intel-lectual and moral elevation of thepeople of India" (ix) Disenchant-ment may have occurred during theviceroyal term of the marquess ofRipon (1880·83). The Liberal adrni-

Bull Ind. Inst. Hist. Med. Vol. XX;

nistration that had nominated himproposed a bill that would have sub-jected European, that is white, offen-ders to trial by native. that is colored.magistrates. Amid a storm of indig-nation, the bill passed now shorn ofthe controversial provisions.

Lord Ripon's good intentions andpersonal sympathy were recog-nized by the natives, and onleaving Bombay he received thegreatest ovation ever accordedto an Indian vicerov.!

In the last resort, science-orien-ted Bengali pundits. most of themsubscribers to his Indian Associationfor the Cultivation of Science, cameto perceive homoeopathy in a softerlight. as jarring less than allopathyagainst "the living heritage of thegreat Hindu civilization, and insteadas blending in-along with the twomajor indigenous arts, Ayurveda andUnani-to the "medical pluralism"that would come to mark the Indianscene." ~

The bhedrelok Mahendralal prac-tised medicine and promoted sciencein Calcutta, the emporium and capitalof Bengal. The thriving port city wasneither MothQr India writ small norvillage India writ large. The newmetropolis thronged with immigranttraders. migrant missionaries. andhealers of every stripe, came fromnear and far. For instance, the Reve-rend William Adam was known in

1. Ency. BrI!. 1910. xiv. 416.

2. Raychat:dhury xi- xii; Charles Leslie. 1976.376. quoted by Bwardaj. 1978. 8)

Bengali Context-Donald Warren

Calcutta as "the second fallen Adam";the former Baptist missionary wasconverted to Unitarianism by RamMohan Roy, a Bengali Brahmin whohad published a selection of theChrist's ethical teachings (1820).1

Most residents of Calcutta spokeBengali. Bengalis were called "Ita-lians of Asia" since they served as aconduit for Western thought whichthey adopted and then transmitted tothe "hardier and more originol racesof Northern India." (175) The threeupper varnas-some five per cent ofCalcutta's Hindu population-tormedthe patron class which Mahendralalbelonged. Good liberal that he was.he avoided usage of caste-consciousterms such LlS "brahmin and bhadra-10k." Throughout the nineteenth,and well into the twentieth century,there were scant few qualified homoe-opaths in the 13 provinces and assor-ted states of India that were notBengali. that were not bhadralok.

These were a 'socially privileged'group that kept "its distance fromthe masses by its acceptance of highcaste prescriptions and its commandof education.t" A passage from acritique Ian Buruna has made of thebhadralok film-maker Satyajit Rayportrays the Bengali intelligentsia :

the first Indian urban middleclass; modern men who sought a

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spiritual answer to modernizationin the fusion of European libere-lism and enlightened Hinduism.Anxious to be cosmopolitan, theywere still steeped in their ownpast. Their position was oftenambivalent .. S

And their title of distinction was"baboo " (from Sanskrit vapra, "afather"), "properly a term of respectattached to a name. like Master orMr." report the editors of the cen-tury-old Hobson-Jobson : A Glossaryof Colcquial Anglo-Indian Words andPhrases. The editors inserted phra-ses from Frazer's Magazine. dated1873, to lend some shading to thedefinition:

The pliable, plastic receptive Babooeagerly avails himself of this sys-tem (of English education) partlyfrom a servile wish to please theSahib logue and partlv from adesire to obtain a Governmentappointment. (44)

The Encyclopaedia Britannica of'910 depicts the "Bengali Bebu"wearing an embroidered cap andpince-nez attached to a string. Thebaboo title no longer applied toMahendralal, once he had finished(first in) the MD. exam (1863). Dr.Sircar occupied no colonial post andthe science funding he solicited camefrom a sprinkling of Nawabs, Hono-

1. The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, ed. John Me. Manners. 1990.2. Broomfie'd.3. Ian Bu:una, "The Last Bengali Renaissance Man" NYR 19 Nov. 1987. 12.

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rabies, Rajas and dozens of Babus.Their interest. which lay rather "inthe discoveries of science than in thescientific method," nevertheless dist-inguished this privileged English-speaking patron class in the Empireof India from the French-speakingone Dr. Benoit Mure associated within the Empire of Brazil. Such senbo-res, almost to a man, were devoid ofinterest in science and least of all inthe empirical sort bb edrelo ks likeMahendralal were raised on.i

Indeed. there is good reason tohypothesize : had the bbedrelokstutor-mentors been Portuguese (orFrench) speaking, Bengali youthaspiring for modernity would havelearned to read the world through aCartesian "lens" (the visual metaphorso favored during the nineteenthcentury). not through the Baconianone which they actually did. BecauseDescartes was well enough off neverhaving needed to work, the Americanhistorian of homoeopathy, Harris L.Coulter tentatively suggests:

"This is perhaps why his systemignores empirical evidence as asource of knowledge ... randholds) that medical practice mustbe based upon a comprehensivetheory of physical and physiolo-gical causes." (II, 111, 119)

The Cartesian deductive mode of1 Raychaudhury 130.2. Tapam Kanjilal HMAI.

BUll. Ind. Inst. Hist. Mea. Vol. XXI

reasoning was to be epitomized bythe American exponent of classicalhomoeopathy. James T. Kent : "Wemust all read (for the first time) theOrganon and then accept it or rejectit," adding how rarely it gets readanyway. In quoting Kent's aphorismand allowing it to pass unchallenged,the contemporary Bengali homoeopathTapam Kanjilal implies no comparabletexts need be consulted. no suppor-tive data brought to bear on Hahne-marin's master work. Has not thefounder's genius, influenced thoughnot governed by experience, alreadytransformed the contingent to thenormative? the empirical to theauthoritativej t This rhetorical ques-tion passes muster as a self-evidentproposition-given a Cartesian mind-set. Predictably, a putative Brazilian(or Quebecois) reader would be pre-disposed to treat the founder's textas canonical-not as historical. Hewould not. moreover, be inclined toturn back and consult the significantlytitled Lesser Writings, themselves theproduct of a tentative rationality.Weren't they mere fugitive pieces thatan "untranscendental" Hahnemanndrafted years before the publicationof his finished works, Organon, PureMateria Medica, Chronic Diseases?In any case, the nineteenth-centuryBrazilian would be far less likely tohave read Hahnemann's Lesser Writ-ings than a bhadralok like Mahen-dralat.


The future Bengali scientist wasreared in the rule-of-thumb mindsetBritish masters drilled into bhadrafokscions at David Hare's School (1841-49), the alma mater of most membersof the educated elite, and at HinduCollege (1850-54). Under PrincipalSutcliffe and Mr. Jones, Professor ofliterature and philosophy, Mahendra-lal absorbed the view that would takequasi official expression in the Ency-clopedia Britannica, Ninth Edition(1875-89). All human knowledge isprogressing in an unproblematic waytoward inerrant truth? The greatLord Bacon had shown the way tosee nature three centuries before andstill presided magisterially over thegiants of English science and prose.8hadralok pupils absorbed a rigorousmodel of polarltv set by that paladinof common sense: causality is divi-ded between the Physic and the Meta-phvsic=effectivelv between scienceand pseudoscience. Empirical appe-als to the "evidence" by adhering toouter reality worked to erode theintegrity of Hindu thinking, whichadhered to the inner vision of realitv.!Doniger addresses this assumptionin her incisive way:

Hindus knew an unfalsifiablehypothesis when they saw onequite as well as Sir Karl Popper;unlike him, they did not let thatknowledrie stop them from belie-ving it (1984,180).

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As former pupils, however, trai-ned to vievv nature through a glassmolded by Anglo-Indian experience,the first Bengalis to water the meta-phorical "tree of Homoeopathy" (Dr.J, N. Kanjilal's phrase) went about itafter the manner of the noble Englishsavant Bacon: mute the deductive,and accentuate the inductive, modeof reasoning. One could almost say,Mahendra opted for homoeopathy lessfrom discipleship to "Lord" Hahne-mann than to Lord Bacon. As it was,the Bengali's estimable qualities asan avatar of science would bestow ameasure of prestige on the system ofmedicine he practised, but whosepromotion he left to P_C. Majunder.(S, M. Bhardwaj phrases this thesisin a curiously ambiguous way: "Alth-ough Sircar adhered to the scientificattitude, his espousal of hornoeo-pathy was perhaps the most signifi-cant landmark in the propagation ofthis system, ") In actuality the "pro-cess of naturalization of homoeopa-thy" in India took longer than inother countries, ending as late as1947, nearly a century after BabuRajender Lal Dutt set it underwaysomewhat histrionically in Calcuttaabout 1860.

Remarkable cures were thenbeing effected and widely ascribedto the homoeopathic remedies dispen-sed by the lay practitioner Dutt(1818-89), the •.Father of Homoeo-

1. Kaka' 28,

22pathy in India." Born to wealth andculture, Dutt "developed a soft cor-ner for the poor sufferers and needy"and started a free dispensary. Havingattended Calcutta Medical College,Dutt, naturally favoured Western not"Native" allopathy He employed anuncle of Mahendra's as Dispensorand Compounder" of drugs, inferen-tially"heroic". He also helped Hin-dus, presumably bhedrs lok , "to betaken back into the fold" after theirhigher education abroad; "the customat that time was to outcast thosewho had left the shores of India."1Dutt has chosen the traditionallysanctioned way of Karma Yoga orselfless work. For one of his ownchronic ailments, however. Dutt wastreated-and "cured in a short time"-by an unnamed homoeopathic lay-man. Now a convert, the Bengaliphilanthrope imported books andremedies (possibly from France) andbegan to practise the art of homoeo-therapeutics himself. He treated vic-tims of a malaria epidemic "very suc-cessfully" with Arsenicum a/b. Apolycrest (a homoeopathic remedy thathas many uses), white arsenic oxideis an acute remedy acting particularlyon the chest and alimentary tract,where there is restlessness, burningpains. craving for heat, chili ness,breathlessness or diarrhoea. 2

The healing fuss that the BabuDut! had stirred up arrested the atten-

Bull. Ind, tnst. Hist. Med. Vo!. XXI

tion of Mahendralal. already the sec-retary (or vice president) of the Brit-tish Me dic al Association, BengaliBranch. Homoeopathy was clearlyattracting patients under the begui-ling Moniker, "the German Medicine"or the "the Hahnemann systems."Dr. Mahendralal. as the bhedrelokspokesman for regular Western medi-cine in Calcutta, promptly addressedthe issue. To the chagrin of the BabuDutt, the young doctor (a nephew ofsorts) denigrated the system as an"occult science unworthy of pursuitby an intelligent person. "3 Mahend-ralal was determined (or had he been"commissior:ed"?) to "smash" theheresy and thus "silence" the noto-rious Babu healer, who was ministe-ring "infinistcsimal nothings" - inreality the pellet sized suq ar pills cal-led globules. Calcutta was never acity of acclaim for the quiescent andthe unassuming. Mahendra's turn-about two years later must have cau-sed a stir equal to Dutts dramaticcures, and probably because thesewent unexamined scientifically, it isnot his but rather Mahendra's co nver-sion that marks the opening of homo-eopathv's "real" history-in the con-sidered opinion of Dr. Bejoy KrishnaSark ar (disCUSSQd below). Mahend-ralal was expelled from the MedicalFaculty in 1867, though he went onteaching one subject or another forsome YE€lrS until he resigned in piqueor disgust.

1. Mazumdar 1973. 140.2. Kishore 1973 BIHM 77; Mazumdar 1973 BIHM 140·11; Ency, 15.3. Basu67.

His unforseen conversion owednothing at all to studying the Orga-non. When he was about 30 Mah-endralal "condescended" to read apamphlet entitled "Philosophy ofHomoeopathy" by one "Morgan"(probably not the author of TheHornoeopethic treatment of Indiges-tion and Constipation and Hemorr-oids, Philadelphia, 1875). This other-wise forgotten exposition of the"new school" of medicine may haveput a dent in Mahendra's Baconianarmor (versions differ). By his ownaccount which was only committedto papers (1902) nearly four decadesafter the event (and Outt was dead),the self-assured bhedretok doctor washard put to resist an unworthyimpulse : at a stroke to refute onrationalist "a priori grounds alone.a system which was alleged to bebased on facts,,, But how to get atthe facts?" The bemused doctor'singenious solution kept within theparameters of is-it-true? British empi-ricism. He took no cues from Hahn-emann's self-experimentation of 1790.He performed no tests with Bengalimedicinal substances, as later bhed-relok have prided themselves on hav-ing done. Inferentially, he may haveconsidered homoeopathic provingsinductively inconclusive- symptoms It is quite possible [Zysk on Zim-artificially produced in the healthy do mer] that the sympathetic aspectnot in themselves assure empirical of magic, which associates likecures of the ill. (In 1865 he would to like, helped the patient psycho-hardly have gone along, incidentally, logically to feel that his jaun-with what his biographer in Dictio- dice, for instance, was being

-------1. Basu 71.

Bengali Context-Donald Warren 23

nary of Indian Biography has written:iatrogenic symptoms "happen to be,in a way. the vague shadows of thedevils that are at work within thediseased person. "1

Quite naturally, Mahendra devi-sed a Bacon-like method to deal withthe controversial state of aftairs. Atwhat must have been considerableexpense to his "professional dignity"Dr. Mahendralal proposed to officiateas Babu Rajender's "clinical clerk."The self-appointed position had noprecedent in Homoeopathy. No fact-seeker could have ever hoped (ordared) to witness the ever reticent,self-contained Hahnemann at firsthand. The young physician fullyexpected from his observation postto expose Dutt's homoeopathic curesas in reality extramedicinal, as dueeither to regimen or to hypnosis,which is to say, either to the Hahne-mannian die tics that the babu instru-cted patients to follow or else to thepsychogenesis induced by the Hindumantras they hummed. Henry Zimm-er's examination of Hindu Medicinestressed that a "suggestive element"was part of the healing process inancient India.

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carried away by birds with yel-low tails. we have no way ofknowing whether this was in factthe position that the patient held,It is merely the view held byZimmer, 1

Shades of Mesmer! (On the basisof observations made of Hindu pati-ents who had been induced into"magnetic" sleep, the ManchesterSurgeon Dr, James Braid had placedbehaviour due to suggestions on afairly scientific basis. He coined thetarm' 'hypnosis" in 1841, whose his-tory in a sense began in India.)

Neither 0f Mahendralals hypo-theses proved true. "This fact stag-gered me," and as 21 result the doctorbegan his own fact-grounded 'trials',Ostensibly maintaining a neutral pos-ture devoid of hints or innuendo, healone prepared and ministered thehomoeopathic remedies, whose com-position, frequency, and dilution gounmentioned. They produced results"bordering on the marvellous if notthe miraculous."2 The adjectivesconnoting amazement, published somany years later, are redolent ofHahnemann, not Bacon. They donot quite square with the conciliatorysentiment he vented in "Our Creed"(1868) : "practically [speaking] we

Bull. Ind. Inst. Htst. Med. Vol. XXI

cannot be wedded to any particularsystem of treatment." (287) Grantedthat his recollection in 1902 mayconstitute as much show as reality,nevertheless his fact-filled versionstands : the apparently materialist-cause one composed by a bhedreio kGradgrind. An oral account must havecirculated earlier and been passed on:to the Bengali homoeopathfinder'smedically qualified cohorts; any disci-ples he may have had, and presumablyto likeminded healers, practising partand full-time, in Calcutta, elsewherein the Province of Bengal, and even-tually in distant areas as well. Someof the qualified homoeopaths were toturn rather dogmatic. Such a Hahne-rnannian attitude would not conformwith "syncretistic mind characteristicof the basic Hindu viewpoint," Bwar-daj asserts with a modicum of pride.(287) It should be noted that fewerBengali allopaths converted than didBritish, American, and even Brazilianrequlars."

Mahendralal's version makes onething clear. Medicinal certitude isbased on remedy - induced cures,themselves congruent with the unfol-ding of what are "f alselv called coldmaterial taws."! A law of cure is notto be adduced from persuasive perso-nalities or from personal illness resto-

1. BIHM, viii, (1978). 16.

2. Ghose 13.3. Ghose 22.4. Basu 71.


red to health. Mahendra himself wasnot a sickly person as Ouin, Mure,and Dutt were -aI/ three cured hom-oeopathically - and young Heringwas brought around as result of along festering finger injury that hea-led only after he skeptically took ahomoeopathic remedy. For all weknow, Mahendra was neither ill norever treated (and cured) homoeopa-thicalJy.

Absent the personal aspect, socompelling in drawing physicians andmedical students towards a favorableview of not outright conversion tohomoeotherapeutics, Dr. Mahendralalinductivelv rational conversion diffe-red in no essential way from those ofother homeopathfinders examinedhere. To be sure, it occured a gene-ration later, after those of Ouin. Mureand Hering, exactly fourteen yearsafter. Hahnemann's Lesser Writingswas first published in London yet tenyearsbefore micro-organisms wouldbe shown to produce specific disea-ses. In 1865 Hahnemann had becomelegendary. the defunct savant parexcellence. and the empiricism ofDudgeon and Hughes now obtainedas the contemporary orthodoxy. TheBengali's residence in a colony out-side geographic Europe seems inci-dental for, in bhadralok circles, thepracticeof regular European medicinewas regarded as unexceptional, on aparwith reading and writing in the

1. J of Ay 439.

25English language itself. As for folkand traditional Indian medicine, hewould have seen that the latter's"mental attitude" would or could notchange with' the changing times"-hence its "downfall", comments anAyurvedic writer. 1 Arguably, then,Mahendralal's conversion at 32 mer-ely moved him from one variety of"modern" medicine to another, tothe one that carried somewhat lesssocial prestige (and perhaps feweremoluments) but, more importantly,demonstrated closer congruence withempirical criteria, and these constitu-ted the very coin of the Anglo-Indian,hence of the bhedr slok , world inwhich Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar prac-tised medicine and promoted science.

What emerges from the scantavailable sources is that Mahendralalhad an abiding respect for and exten-sive knowledge of Western science,itself well documented by a lecturehe delivered in 1872, "On the neces-sity of national support to an institu-tion for the Cultivation of the Physi-cal Sciences by the Natives of India."(16-40). He gave voice to whatproved to be his unwavering, nega-tive stand on an issue critical for thequalified homoeopath : Can one prac-tice scientific medicine in a supersti-tious culture? Try as one might, evenif he happened to have none butbhadra/ok (fee-paying) patients, thedoctor could not disengage himself

26entirely from the greater world ofwhat he derogated as 'Hindu apathy'.To undo that lamentable situation inBengal. the liberal Mahendralal deci-ded upon a stroke directed to its basepoint. He utilized his own CalcuttaJournal of Medicine (est. 1868, wit-hout homeopathic in its title) andpublished the opening editorial of acampaign that advocated founding acollege not of homeopathic, but ofEuropean, science. Forming anddirecting the trailblazing organizationconsumed more of his energy. if notof his time. than did treating patients."Whenever his pursuit of scienceclashed with his medical profession,he preferred science to the otherone." j Upon his death in 1902, hisson Amrita succeeded as director.

"For a variety of reasons." hetold his elitist. babu audience In1872.

the natives of India have longceased to take an active part inthe world of intellect. In thisrespect we are as if we were not;the vast tract of country weInhibit is a perfect blank.

Bengali youths simply did notdistinguish between experiments ofscience and feats of the jugglerowing to their unawareness of "defi-nite laws." What came to be calledin Calcutta journals "the Battle ofTheory and Practice," he noted in

Bull. Ind. tnst. Hist. Me d. Vol. XXI

1877 after his institute was actuallyfounded. was just "a fight aboutshadows." As usual, he dwelt onthe data of the natural sciences,"subdued by a wonderful objectiverealism," and waxing uncharacteristi-cally figurative. he metaphorized themas "Iiving poetry," as "crystallizedscience." (18) In the upshot thepriority he had placed on theory overpractice, on scientific ovar technicaleducation, gave rise to a few sharpthrusts: what the "eminent practisingphysician" must have in mind wasnothing less than "a Royal Society ofIndia, even more than a Royal Insti-tution of London in India" at a timewhen the teaching of science had"degenerated into a mere book cram."(120) Of course the Bhadralok liberalsaw fit to print critical commentary inthe archive of his speeches publishedin 1880 under the title The IndianAssociation for Cultivation of Science.Overall. he showed. perhaps unwitti-ngly, that he occupied a mental uni-verse somewhat apart from that ofthose bhadralok that supported hiliscience institute. As a rule, Raychau-dhury has reported, they "almostcompletely ignored the scientific basisof the whole structure", and devotedtheir attention to "religious and socialdoctrines". (130) They displayed littleinclination to remove ideas from theirpackaging and even less to pursueprimary research.

1. Basu 68.


The collective babu mentalityexplains in some measure why thequietly controlled Mahendralal did solittle missionizing of the bbedrelo k,apparently preferring to let the cura-tive data.

The collective babu mentalitymay partway explain why the Bengalihomoeopathfinder did not missionize,apparently preferring, like Hughes inlondon, to let the curative data speakfor themselves. In point of fact, theonly reference this "obscure practi-tioner of medicine" made to his sys-tem of treatment occurs in a lonefootnote (so probably not spoken,but appended to the printed text).He blandly alluded to spectrum ana-lysis, an

agency for detecting the presenceof minute traces of several sub-stances. [It has confirmed] theinfinitesimal posology of theHahnemannian system, ..no won-der to those who have satisfiedthemselves as to [its] efficacy.(1880. 24)

His passing mention seems a shadeless conciliatory than "Our Creed"(1868) :

Even if convinced that a certainlaw is the absolute law of cure,still from our inability to apply itin all cases, we must not sacrificethe interests of our patients,simply because we cannot get

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hold of a remedy to work aCCOf-

ding to the law.'

The fact that the remedies headministered proved effective out-weighed considerations of theory anddosage. It outweighed too those ofcharity to be exploited as propagandain the manner of Mure et al. Besidesthe model provided by the philanthropeQuit. who in the end was unable toretain the services of a qualified phy-sician, Mahendralal had two modelsto go by. One model constituted theinvidous one set by Protestantmissionaries preaching in Bengal.Their emphasis upon the mira-culous could scarcely impress anyeducated Hindu familiar with theslack accounts of supernatueralwonders in his own devotional litera-ture. Missionary distribution ofhomoeopathic remedies might havemitigated the distaste the Hindu feltfor salvation through the blood of asaviour save for one glaring circum-stance. Along with medicinal charitywent the missionary perceptionsummed up in the classic phrase:"the monster of Hinduism. the enemyof both God and man."2 The otherconstituted the very correctly profe-ssional stance which Dr. Quin drilledinto up-and-coming homoeopaths.Hahnemann. after all. founded asystem of treatment that for variousreasons appealed to clients of themiddling and upper classes; he did not

1. BViardaj 1973. 287.2. Rayachaudhury 24.

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organize an outlet for distributingglobules free to the poor. Mahendralalattached value to neither model.Apposite to his altruism, e homoeo-pathic biographer noted withunderstandable circumspection thatMahendralal "evinced some of thecharitable spirit of R. Dutt", andunderwent financial sacrifice.! If suchwas indeed the case, it was in alllikelihood owing to the longer timehe spent with each patient comparedwith his allopathic compeers. Medicinewas less a ministry than a profession.

Bhedrelok social privilege, too,must have contributed to Mahendra-lal's decision not to set up charitydispensaries or to foster the creationof the "legions" of semi-qualifiedpractitioners that Mure let loose inBrazil. Bengal had a motley host offolk healers already in place. The non-medically qualified, or lay, hornoeo-paths (discussed below), may havestruck Mahendralal as sharing toomuch of their client's superstitiousoutlook. With respect to commonpeople's practical wisdom in mattersmedical. he took the same dim viewas Hughes -- though not as Hehne-mann. The bhadralok phvsicienlamented their "importuning us toprescribe for patients whom we haveno opportunity of seeing" -- whosepathological signs, in other words,figured no less than subjective symp-toms in arriving at the true similimum.(39) As a fledgling allopath, Mahen-

Bu!l. Ind. tnst . Hist, Med. Vol. XXI

dra had taken a vehement, forthrightstand against "occult" homoeopathy.Nevertheless. he later seemed toharbor little animus against the"Native allopathic" practice whichhis parents (both dead of cholera at32) and grand parents must havegrown up with. Over time he

proved himself enlightened enoughto begin inquiry into the indige-nous Ayurvedic system both as a-iopen minded scientist and as anindividual aware of the richnessof the national heritage in thefield of medicine, [8wardajasserts, disappointingly withoutdocumentation. (287)]

The Indian Medical Gazette,however, did not display equal Hindutolerance. Taking its cues fromEnglish allopaths, who feared theinroads homoeopaths made into theirclientele, the journal urged Mahen-dra's removal from the medical facultyof the University of Calcutta (1878),though conceding his gentlemanlyand progressive practices and point-ing up his "considerable influence inthe native [bhadralok?] community."The allopathic journal. perhaps sensingthe turn events would take in Sircar'smedicinal orientation. linked homoeo-pathy with ayurveda in "spirit andmethod," two systems "of falsedoctrine and irrational practice, .At no loss for the misplaced adjective,it declared homoeopathy a "system

1. Emphasis mine; Basu 67.


of absurd transcendentalism, tinctured(an intentional pun?] with positivequackery". 1

To summarize, Mahendralalconverted to homocopathy whilesecure inside the pale of Westernscience yet all too aware of

the great defects, inherent andacquired, of the Hindu mind ofthe present day, [defects that]could only be remedied by thetraining which results from theinvestigation of natural pheno-mena." (32)

Because "apathetic Bengal" was thevery antithesis of Prussia, the naturallaws discoverable in the sciencesmust take precedence over the detailsof technical or medical education.The priorities were quite clear to him,for "science is the sole foundation ofskill." (v) Drilled in the pieties ofempiricism, he thought its rigorousstandards of testing and clinicalrecord keeping were better met by thehomoeopalhic than by the allopathicsystem of treatment. In contradistin-ction to the hornceopathfinders QuinMure and Hering, Mahendralal didnot himself proselytize. He leftmissionizing among the bhadralok tothe good offices of Mujumdar. Thedetails of quotidian prescribing appearnot to have excited his interest. Theportrait that emerges from variousaccounts is of a man of integrity,

29

cour aqe, and pr cbablv of medicalastuteness. He was neither a fanatic,nor an opportunist.

Like his Guru, Samuel Hahnernann,it may be said of him that he wasa scholar whom scholars dreadedto dispute; he was a linguistwhose m-sterv over the ancientlore of Sanskrit was neariy asgreat as that over the English; hewas a physician who was headand shoulders above his collea-gues. and over all he was aphilosopher ... .:

It is problematic whether he openedhimself up to a degree and came toview wi.h favor the spiritual compo-nent in the Hahnemannian system.From the rather patchy evidence athand, Mahendralal's conversion talehas to serve for the contingent ofqualified homoeopaths in WestBengal, themselves onetime allopaths,that converted, They were few innumber but fairly great in prestige.As it happened, they received noteven passing mention in the accountrendered by another btiedrelo k homo-eopath, conceivably owing to hisstatus as a nonqualified practitioner.As such, he W1JS to have far moredirect successors than the medicallyqualified homoeopath, Dr. MahendraLal Sircar (1833-1904),

Had Hahnemann read Sanskrit,Benovtosh Bhattacharyya, Ph.D. con-

1. Bwardaj, 287.2. "In Memoriam", Nov. 1952, B. K. Sarkar, 8 Essays 46.

30

tended. he would have been conver-sant with ayurvedic Tridosha. His"genius" would naturally haveperceived that the three primordialelements, water, fire, air, inhere inthe very "system of medicine" hefounded. The Bengali scholar wentfurther. He contended that, whencoordinated with homoeopathy, Tri-dosha would have effects amountingto a therapeutics even "subtler" thanthe "priceless gift" which the "greatseer of Cosmic Truths" conferred onhumankind. (xxxvii)

It was during the 19305 thatBhattacharyya criginally voiced his farfrom unique view. Sensing a pervasivedissatisfaction with homoeopathicpractice among the "many who haveneither learning nor brains such asWaS expected by Hahnemann," hestarted to conduct experiments withhomoeopathic remedies "in the lightof Tridosha." (xxxvii) He felt that"harmonization" of the two systemswould render the science of"Mahatma Hahnemann" more acce-ssible to the growing number ofill-prepared "doctors" and so bringhomoeopathy out of the "doldrumsto its rightful place in the world."(43)

The gist of his thesis was ori-ginally published as a number ofarticles in a rather obscure journal heedited, Baroda Homoeopathic Bulletin.They caught the eyes of a sympatheticfeader "in the West," Howard D.

Bull. Ind. Inst. Hist. Med, Vol. XXI

Strangle. Under the title The Scienceof Tridoshet he underwrote theirpublication and composed a lengthyintroduction oriented to an Ameri-can readership. The book's somewhatelliptical quality may be attributed toits having been composed fromfragments.

For close to a century homoeo-pathic medicines have been prescribedin India, Bhattacharyya claims, and tolittle salutary avail. Homoeopathy hasbeen no more than an "unsuccessful"exercise. To date, its "commonpractitioner" typifies the "generalmass." He employs "crude methods"Meagerll'!Yeducated, he does not rankamong the "scholarly few." He cannothelp rating the system as "compli-cated" and resenting its practice as"laborious," He has fastened uponHahnemann's system at the informa-tional level comprehensible to thecollective mentality, and provesincapable of grasping the esoteric.that is the ayurvedic, level on which"the most highly qualified practitio-ners" communicate among themselves8S only "Sanskrit scholars" can do,In a word, he is Bhattacharyya'scompatriot, yet not his compeer. Asit happens, the historical thesisBhattacharyya presented amountspretty much to the standard placebenicone advanced in allopathic historiesof medicine: Watchful expectationalone accounts for the efficacy attri-buted to the hornoeopath's globules;

1. New York 1951 or 1956 (Gotham Book Mart).


in reality the presence and personalityof the therapist have been the primaryremedies, particularly when it comesto chronic afflictions of which anxietyis a major component.

But now, homoeopaths are primedto adopt "a slightly modified system"that applies the theories of Tridoshato homoeopathy. Once the "laws ofthe three cosmic elements" are har-monized with the Hahnemanniantheory, "crude methods should giveway to a nobler. gentler and humanemethod of healing", and "prescriptionwill be a mechanical work." TheTridosha method of criticism, "India'sprized possession", will set to rights

the "singular misfortune" that Hahne-marin's regrettable ignorance ofSanskrit incurred. (xiv-xv)

Benoytosh Bhattacharyya (1897-1964) was about to begin schoolwhen Mahendralal Sircar died earlyin the century, and so the boy grewup at a period when homoeopathywas clearly stagnating everywhereelse in the world save perhaps inIndia, where there was more thanenough room for agonized doubtsand reformist arguments. By then,

.. only two of the ancient sciencesof India continue[d] as effectiveelements in the life of the country,ayurveda and the Perso-IslamlcUnani [Basham states in A CulturalHistory of India.] Both, ... though

31

based in their classical forms onfalse premises. are pragmaticallyeffective in curing and relie-ving, many diseases, and theirdrugs and therapy are less expen-sive than those of modern Westernmedicine. (Each] is very important.[Writing in 1975, the year thatsaw publication of the Indianedition of Bhattacharyya's treatiseon Tridosha, Basham concludes,]Every city of India has many homo-eopathic pharmacies, which stilldo lively trade, and often claimspectacular cure s.!

These flourishing circumstances didnot obtain at the turn of the centurywhen the Hahnemannian art ofhealing came into the life of youngBenoytosh Bhattacharyya.

Himself one of the bhadralokyouth with talent, energy, and aprobably significant sickness-in-the-family impetus, Benoytosh took itupon himself to master the homoeo-pathic science, pursuing this extra-curricular avocation under a Guru.Apparently he had decided to followthe way of Karma Yoga. This altruisticconduct was personified by RajunderDutt "the Father of Homoeopathy inIndia", who passes unmentioned inBhattacharyya's little book. In duecourse the Bengali doctor came tocombine in himself five essentialskills: Sanskrit scholarship, knowledge

1. Basham 493-4.

32

of oriental and occidental medicine,pulse reading, homoeopathy, andextensive clinical practice. (xiv)

It is not an easy thfng to be aSanskritist with ability to super-impose Tridosha on homoeopathy.To combine the two is only withinthe powers of an orienta list. Inthe case of a controversy or clari-fication, it will be difficult for anyother man to answer. In the past150 years, no one could be found.(xiii;

Benoytosh Bhattacharyya. Ph D.,was following precedent, actinq inthe manner ascribed by FrancisZimmermann to ayurvedic doctors:they "superimpose upon the religiousprinciples of purity and hierarchyothers of a different order", medicinalones, in fact, which "contradict thetradition's orthodoxy and ritualism."(2) One might ask, different forwhom? for the doctors? or onlyfor Dr. Zimmermann the Westernanthropeloqist? Whatever the answer,the "self-consciously 'traditionalist'intellectual" Bhattacharyya predictedhis treatise on the premise thatTridosha complimented homoeopathicmedicine without significantly tampe-ring with its philosophv.! What ismora, as stated in the second edition(Calcutta 1975), which is an effort in"popularizing the Tridosha conceptamongst Homoeopaths in' India",

1. Rayachaudhuri xii.

BUll. Ind. lnst . Hist Med, Vol. XXI

tridosha would spare the garden-variety homoeopath from wastingfurther time laboriously trying to find"the true similimum." (xxxvii)

Should the ordinary Jay practi ..tioner take the polymath's lesson toheart, he might find the guru'sassurance cut two ways. On the onehand, the law of symptom similarityremained "great and unalterable".On the other, "one should rise abovethe printed word and find results forhimself." (42) One finding goes asfollows:

Simply because Homoeopathy usespotentized medicines, it is noargument that they cannot bemixed... All Homoeo medicines,particularly the potentized ones,are nothing but cosmic rays ofdifferent colours and when theyare combined according to a defi-nite plan they become so powerfulthat nothing seems to be impossiblefor them to achieve. Now it isnecessary to find out the wave-lenqth of all the remedies andfrom these vceve- lengths theircosmic colours should be fixed.(xxxvi-xxxviii)

Tridosha is examined below, but first"old Ayurveda science", or the know-ledge of life (Skt, avu). receives itsown due.

Before the era of classical avur-veda, Jean Filliozat writes in The

Bengali Context-: Donald Warren

Ctessicet Doctrine of Indian Medicine,there was:

an roea of the correspondencebetween these [natural] elements[;] the constituent principles ofthe body had been developed andthis must have prepared the (wayfor the) latter- day developmentof the two parallel physiologiesand cosmologies.

Further on he notes that while ayur-vsda has preserved some nosologicalnomenclature of the Vedas, it has"almost completely abandoned anci-ent therapeutics", which was not"scientifically" based, as he under-stood the term. (187)

Another French scholar, FrancisZimmermann, titling his grand bookJungle and the Aroma of Meats:An Ecological Theme in HinduMedicine, nicely captures its elusive-ness :

Far from being an invention ofman as a collection of empiricalrecipes would be, Ayurveda isbeyond our powers of knowledgeand submits us to laws whichcan be taught but cannot bediscovered. (9)

If laws of such indeterminate natureare suggestive of a homoeopathicanaloqv, hardly less so does theayurvedic doctor whose

ideal is to accustom oneself to hit

33

on the right choice of regimen,learned doses, and mixtures, 80

that the nature of what is eaten[read 'ingested' for homoeopathy]is rendered appropriate to thenature of the one who eats['takes'] it. (9)

No brahmin doctor can be taken asany run-of-the-mill "empiric". Likethe homoeopath he adapts curativemeasures to the needs of each indi-vidual patient, not to the siqns ofdisease.

"An excellent Sanskritlst", hemay consult an array of ayurvedic trea-tises and lexicons, where he wouldfind "a luxuriance of synonyms.a mixture of wordy empiricism andphantasmagoria, an omnipresent dia-lectic between contrary qualities .:"(7) He might memorize the Amara-k oso as well as perhaps one of thegreat medical samhita but as a rulehe would not be familiar with theUpanisad" or other sacred texts andrites, (212) Indeed, the "study of theVedas was forbidden to" him. Onlyonce could he read or hear themrecited. All told, the Hindu doctor"led an isolated intellectual life sealedoff from the Tradition as a whole,which was transmitted to him onlythrough the specialized point of viewof the Avurveda." (213) This shelteredoutlook is correlative with that of thehomoeopath in nineteenth-century

1. P. 79, cited by Zysk 18.

34

continental Europe, a bookish typethat had steeped himself in theOrganon, that consulted the fivevolumes of Pure Materia Medica,was conversant with those of Chro-nic Diseases, and had read most ofthe master's Lesser Writings. Therole of the Sanskritistjpractitioner, inPure Materia Medica, in those ofChronic Diseases, and improbably inLesser Writings. The role of thereader/practitioner, in Zimmerrnann'sdeft phrasing, is "to interpret a hiddenart which perception could not enablehim to see but which words havetaught him.' (9) So stated, thedoctor's relationship to the naturalsciences, as the term is taken in "theoverall Hindu tradition", might seemstrange to the Western homoeopath.

The idea of a 'science' of Natureis altogether alien to India or, tobe more precise, in India it isformulated in a radically differentfashion .. the idea of Nature isabsorbed by the idea of Food, aszoology is by pharmacv, (198)

Zimmermann's extended comme-ntary on Ayurveda recalls nineteenth-century allopathic writers expatiatingon Hannemann's medical system.

The impression given by Ayurvedictherapy is that of a vast makeshiftjob: it consists of a mass of recipes

Bull. Ind. tnst. Hist. Med. Vol. XXI

in which the most bizarre ingredi-ents crop up ... These magic subs-ranees are associated with thepresence of fabulous beasts, ..The medical discourse thus appearsto be intermingled with the imagi-nary; in truth, however, it is theWestern [read "allopathic"] inter-preter who has introduced fromthe outside these distinctionsbetween the natural and the magic,the ordinary and the fabulous. Inreality, all of these associationsare presented on the same footingwithin a single, homogenousdiscourse.!

Ergo, in another context, Certum estquia impossible est. A modernAyurvedist says much the same thing,deploying a seemingly ingenousargument to demonstrate his medi-cine's "scientificity";

If a student of Modern Medicineunderstands the fundamentals ofAyurveda, he will realize thesuperiority of Ayurveda overModern Medicine. It is not themedicines that are used by theAyurvedic physician, that gaveAyurveda its reputation as a sci-ence, but its basic principles whichgave a different approach to thescience. They are very simple, ifone has the curiosity to understandthem."

1. 20B. Emphases mine.2. Dr. A. l.akshmipathi. "The Fundamentals of Avurveda",

The Journal of Ayurveda, 9 (Sept) 1950,345.


Nevertheless, Ayurvedic medicine,Zimmermann enjoins, does not lenditself to piecemeal analysis.

Ayurveda must be taken en bloc:it stands as a whole and single'myth', a whole and single'science'. [It] is concerned notsimply to catalog remedies butalso to teach the judicious use ofthem. (208, 217)

Can much the same not be said ofclassical homoeopathy?

Bhattacharyya deems two aspectsof Hahnernann's medical systemessential, the position taken by hisson, Dr. A K. Bhattacharyya, whohelped to edit the posthumous editionof The Science of Tridosha : TheThree Elements in Homoeopethv:First and foremost, homoeopathy is"the only dynamic system of medicineavailable to mankind", the mostfulsome praise that they could bestow.(xv) But they considered its materiamedica, "the small doses given atvery long intervals", less than uniqueand urgently needful of reformulationand reclassification in accordancewith Hindu science. Even so, as theBengali homoeopath sought toreassure his English-language reader-ship, the homoeopathic pharmacopoeiawould continue to concord with theparadigms of Hehnernann's "true andinvariable law of similsrs." Putanother way, any homoeopath whoshould act upon the book's premise

35and prescribe medicines according toTr idosh a could do so without in anyrespect undermining the philosophyof homoeopathy. Inferentially, hismedicines would be confined tothose registered in the standardhomoeop rthlc materia medica for, ifnothing else, they entail far lesslabor than Ayurvedic medicines.

In Ayurveda potantlz auon is doneby rubbing for months, by heatingand boiling medicines for months,by exposing medicines to rays ofthe Sun and the Moon for moths.(xxxvii)

Technique aside, the Hindu traditionholds the key to Dr. Bhattacharyya'shypothesis.

The qualities and powers of thehomoeopathic drugs have beendescribed in a picturesque mannerin the Tattiriya Upanishad, ... [the]manner the ancients used torecord scientific laws and facts.(xvii)

Because young Benoytosh hadready access to homoeopathic litera-ture and to relatives in homoeopathicpractice, he did not undergo a conver-sion experience as such. The cure ofhimself and that of a sibling broughthim around. As a bhedretok school-boy, afflicted with headaches, andgetting no satisfaction from the familydoctor. "who happened to be anallopath", the youngster turned to

36

self-medication. He took remedieswhose compostion he found in bookspresented to his family by an uncle,an "old relative with long practice ofHornoeopathv behind him andwhenever he published a book onHomoeopathy, he used to present uswith a copy". Benovtosh attributedhis own cure to a daily "dram ofChina 6", the very drug which hadput Hahnemann on the track of thesimilar-symptom principle. Severalyears later, when he was 16 (1912),he observed the cure of a youngersister suffering with a nervousdisorder, Chorea (St. Vitus' Dance).

She was given such large quanti-ties of Bromide that she becamevery ill and was unconscious forfull seven days The allopathicdoctor, a relative of ours, reportedto my father that my sister couldsurvive only for 24 hours.. Myfuther sent for another relative ofours who was a reputed Homo-eopath He examined. particularlyher pulse, very carefully andpronounced [she] would recoverconsciousness within 24 hours andthat there was no danger to herlife. After long meditation andobservation, he gave Lycopodium200 and repeated the dose afterone hour and waited for results.Next morning, the patient wokeup at 10 a.m. perfectly normal ..my sister is still living [1940s].(xxi)

Bull, Ind. lnst Hist, tvte d. V"OI. ,.••Xl

Conversion: "I became a staunchadvocate of Homoeopathy." Dr.Mahendranath B., her horneotherepist.became his intellectual and spiritualmentor, "my Guru". Thanks to hisguidance and to valuable books. "Iwas able to prescribe medicines forall and sundry whenever they werein difficulty."

But when he left Calcutta in 1924for Baroda, far from Bengal, "mydifficulties became very real as therewas neither a Homoeopath nor half aa dozen people who ever heard thename of Homoeopathy."

Faithful like a true orthodoxhomoeopath [in the manner ofHughes? or likely of Kent?] I usedto prescribe after r9ading booksand comparing symptoms, but thatdid not take me very far. Allalong, however, I had great inte-rest in the pulse [a fundamentalTridosha procedure] and in eachcase I carefully noted the pulsereading before prescribing. (xxii)

When Benoytosh had completed hisM. A (Gold Medalist) at the age of27 at Calcutta University, he was justa year short of earning his first Ph. D.in Oriental Studies and three yearsshort of setting up and manning hisfirst charitable dispensary. Officiallyemployed as Director of the OrientalInstitute in Baroda, he functionedpart-time as a lay practitioner, in themanner long practised by so many


British and Bengali hornoaopaths,lawfully, and without any socialstigma attaching to his 'non-qualified'status. Thus the following editorialcircumstance may not be so implau-sible as it seems upon first reading.Under the rubric some editormandated, namely "Hobbies", Dr.Bhattacharyya, whose first publicationwas titled Indian Buddhist Iconogra-phV (1924), would list: "Photography,astrology, mystic sciences. homoeo-pathv, sculpture and painting."}

More plausibly, dictates of tempera-ment and tradition impelled him tofollow the "way of Karma Yoga orselfless work", which seemed theright path to a savant/healer fromBengaLl

37allopathic diagnosis.

The three pulses have "rules tobe remembered", the Bengali doctorenjoins. From a pulse jumpy withfire -- as with the movement of a spa-rrow, crow, or frog -- the doctorexpects to fi nd sleeplessness, diar-rhoea, vertigo, (high) blood pressure,heat of the skin, eyes, palms, solesand so forth. "A water (k apha) pulseis elegant, swan- like, pigeon-like,and slow moving" (Ch. Sharma 62);correlated to dullness, cough, cold,melancholia, constipation, etc. Whenthe air element (vata) is deranged,the pulse becomes fast -- like themovement of a snake or a leech;correlated to indigestion fever,nervous troubles, colic and so on,The air dosbs, Stangle informs us, is"the neutral or axial centre to" theother two, (Literally, dosha means"defect" or "fault"; it is sometimesrendered "fluid" or "element'.)

Benoytosh opens chapter 8, thecapital one in his treatise, with theframing statement: "The pulse is asubject of first class importance inthe Hindu Science of Medicine." (54)Overthree millennia ago the ancients"discovered" upwards of 600 varia-tions on the three (Skt. tri) basicmovementsthe human pulse registers:fast, slow, and jumpy. And now,after "years of practice, .. the truthdawned on me that the real synthesisin Homoeopathy does not lie in thetotality of symptoms, but in the The Thuja pulse is thin, wiry, hard,characterof the pulse and its various stiff, jumpy and often fast. Amovements" -- not to be confounded celebrated Homoeopath used towith pulse counting performed in say: "when in doubt, give Thuja. "1. UnnumberedP. quoted from the Biographical Encyclopaedia of the World 1946.2. Kakar 29.

Tridosha analysis is thus predictedon a correspondence between, on theone hand, the three primal elementsof life and, on the other, the threebasic movements in pu Ise. Fast,slow, or jumpy, the movementindicates the remedy.

38

It is one of the wisest and soun-dest of advices. In my handsThuja has ... cured chronic diseases

mostly ef Pitta or Fire class.(xxv)

As a rule. "a fire medicine wilt gowell with a fire disease, but not withan air or water disease." (41) Air isthe most vital element; it is life itself(discussed below). In acute disease,though the element at fault may bewater or fire, "preference should begiven to such remedies as containthe air element." (Stangle finds aready and erudite means for interca-lating the three primal elements intohomoeopathy -- in accordance withhis own, nonclassical understanding:

Standard homoeopathic practiceuses these terms under differentdesignations, referring to them asthe 'hot' and 'cold' temperamentsof persons and also in the stillcloser comparison of Grauvoqefas the Oxygenoid, Hydrogenoid,and Carbonitrogenous constitu-tions. (iv)

The American's commentary doesnot seem particularly helpful.

The threefold classification ofdisorders is illustrated with Bhatta-charvva's "VPK (air-, fire + water)Medicines."

There are some medicines in thisgroup which are of immense use

1. Edward Von, 1811-77; Nuremburg.

Bu/I. Ind. Inst. Hist, Med. Vol. XX!

In acute cases where all the threeelements are in disorder such asBaptisia [tinctorial This medicinewill cure more cases of fever thanmentioned in the [Hahnernann]book of Materia Medica ... even ifall the symptoms are not foundfor this medicine \. would recom-mend the use of Baptisia in lowerpotencies in any kind of fever of aremittent type. Similarly the medi-cine SEPIA in Homoeopathy is notpropc rlv used to get the maximumbenefit. This is a great medicineand the characteristic of thismedicine is.. an ImperceptiblePulse, To describe this pulse Iwould say that the pulse appears[a visual metaphor?] under a thicklayer of fat even though thee maybe no fat on the wrist. (42-43)

Unaccountably. Bhattacharyya makesno reference at all to the system ofdistinctive body types elaborated inAyurveda.

Four factors are present in thetridosha -orie n ted cons ul tation : thepatient's puls= and his/her disease;both these are "negative phases"that ought to be overcome by thedoctors medicine and the diet heprescribes. (xxx) This last item, verymuch an extra- Hahnemannian entry ~into homeotherapeutics, conforms to ~the Ayurvedic Law of Digestion and t

to the Principle of Six Tastes, andrepresents Bhattacharyya's tacit ack- ~

I


nowledgement that therapeutics sho-uld accord with the dominant culturalmodel, namely the Hindu absorptionwith foods and their preparation inritual, medical and other criticalareas-highlighted in Zimmermann'swork. The four-cornered harmony isinvariably "brought into play" so asto effect the "pacification" of thedisease-Hahnemann's phrasing, insome contrast, runs "removal andannihilation of the dlsease."!

Once the doctor has caught the(cosmic) correspondence betweenpulse and disease elements, "pres-cription will be a mechanical work."(xv) Diagnosis proved "both easyand speedy. Medicines used to flashin my mind as I touched the pulse."So doing, "(I could) clear 250/300cases per hour. .." Given Sanskritichyperbole, a caveat should accom-pany Bhattacharvva's claim. Lowerby a quarter, even a half?2 His"medicines' contained chiefly, butapparently not invariably, high dilu-tions, notably "200." He does notstate how often he settled on "asingle omnibus remedy" such as Thuja(ix). yet in chronic cases, ...SEPIAshould be one of the roulne medi-cines, even though there is no rou-tine in the science of Homoeopathy."(43) This last perfunctory adden-dum proffered, he assures his read-

39ership : the "simple movement" ofthe pulse affords the homoeopath"the most vital information aboutthe patient."

He defends this anti-canon ofhis with a reference to fever, whichis "a bugbear to homoeopaths, .[be-cause] symptoms do not lead us any-where," (xxii) Further on he exp-lains, "though Ammon. Carbo doesnot produce cancer in the prover, itdoes work against cancer. Homoeo-pathy cannot find this out." (74) Pulseexamination can and does do so,again because the pulse triad iscorrelated with cosmic-elements tri-desha. so that the disfunction ofany element is disclosed by irregularpulse movement. Briefly put, thescience of tridosha consists of thetwo triads in conjuncture. Theircorrespondence, it is worth noting,has its analogue in the system Hah-nemann was to discover : naturalsymptoms in correspondence withsimilar iatrogenic ones.

Bhattacharyya's sudden enligh-tenment respecting pulse examina-tion- "the truth dawned on me"-iscongruent with the decomposition orsimplifcation of what is "perhaps themost important diagnostic method"in Hindu medicine, as Benjamin Wal-ker describes it in The Hindu World.

1. Organon s 2

2. How is Homoeopathy actually (1988) practised in India?In a word, quickly Resonance Jul-Aug 1988. 14.

40

In theory the [Ayurvedic] study ofdiagnosis is extremely complica-ted since it takes into account theinteraction or combination (ssm-yoga) of all aspects of a patient'slife. The importance of theseaspects has been variously stres-sed and widely different theoriesof their nature and sphere of ope-ration abound in Ayurvedic litera-ture. To be clearly grasped in allits ramifications, a comprehensivechart is to be drawn up in whicha place is found for each likelydetail that might have contributedto the disease in question, andfew if any physicians today troubleto take more than a few of thesetheoretical factors into account.Often the tabulation is ignoredand the doctor just proceeds alongthe paths dictated by commonsense. [276-7}

Or, as dictated by tridosha. whichin Bhattacharvva's presentation, pro-ves to be a good deal less laboriousthan finding the right remedy withHahnemann's method. On this score,Coulter remarks with a tinge ofregret :

The true Empiricism was that ofHahnemann who held each indi-vidual patient to differ from eachother, requiring the remedy speci-fic to his own illness, . [This pro-ved] too extreme for the averagephysician, imposing on him the

Buff. Ind. Inst. Hist. Med. Vol. XXI

heavy moral burden of discover-ing the one medicine best suitedto the needs of the given patient.(II, 574)

When perceived extreme or labo-rious, practice gets simplified. Whileboth Ayurveda and Homoeopathy holdthat normality has to be determinedindividually, practitioners have beenpredictably quick to adopt thoserecommendations that entailed theleast effort.

The two arts of healing maintainthat while the causes of disease lie"hidden," they Can in a w~y be fath-omed. This applies far more so toAyurveda, whose doctors have reco-urse to an elaborate etiology thatencompasses: the patient's karma; adiabolic theory; planetary factors,and lastly "the patient's own condi-tion." Condition alone takes in :"family background, heredity, caste,the 'soil factor: i.e. the climate, foodand water; temperament, constitu-tion." (I. 277) The last narned is theexpress term classical homoeopathsemploy--Grauvogel's three tempera-ments exemplifying constitutionaltyping. Once they have laboriously"taken the case" of their patient,they assign to her or him the name ofa remedy correlated with her or hisbuilt-in "temperament and physiolo-gical configurations"-as opposed toany symptoms that may actually attendher or his emotional dysfunction or


physical disorder." "Phosphorous isoften of lean build and excitabletemperament."2 Yet whereas homo-eopathv's comparatively limited expe-rience has uncovered hundreds ofpersonality types, each of which takesits name from the correlative remedy,the tridosha method of determiningtype has been in operation over a farlonger span of time and has workedwith more preciseness, the Bengalihealer asserts. In constitutionalpractice, the Ayurvedic doctor putshis fingers on the patient's pulse; thehomoeopathic doctor gives a closelistening to a patient's responses tomanifold questions-both practitio-ners presumably keeping a weathereye for telltale signs. Still, Bhatta-charyya-like increasing numbers ofhornoeopaths in the West-thinks it"absolutely necessary to ask ques-tions about dreams" so as "rea lIy tounderstand the patient." And hemight ask "Do you gat vertigo?"' or,"Do your eyes burn?" Receiving "anaffirmative answer" to this query, thedoctor would at once decide thepatient is suffering from an excess

of the element fire, [which] ... canbe reduced by almost any thing-by Allopathy, Hornoeopathv orNaturopathy or even by a gooddose of curds or sugar, ice or coldbath. (56)

Of course, the eclectically rnedi-

41

cinal sweep here might inspire won-der in a reader of the classical stripe,particularly when taken in conjunc-tion with the off-putting admonitionprinted in the preface to the Indianedition : "Let it not be presumedthat I advocate complete scrapping ofHomoeopathy in the present form."(xxxvii) What is more, he or shemight find dubious the followingreference to the Ayurvedic Law ofDigestion:

Now Tridosha as applied to Ham-oeopathy will naturally lead us toa more systematic use of Homoeomixtures, in order that they maydevelop power and tastes so asto be universal in their applicationwithout causing any aggravation.3

To justify the "combination tab-lets" then being sold in the marker,he points to the "mixtures" advoca-ted by Dr, Eric F. W. Powell (authorof The Group Remedy Practitioner),themselves "actually on sale in Eng-land."

To summarize, the Avurvedic"patient's own condition" accordswith his or her homoeopathic consti-tution. Either way, then, whetherthe homoeopath abides by the Scienceof Tridosha or by the Law of Simi-lars. for each individual patient heor she may prescribe constitutionallyrat.ier t~n symptomatically.

1. Org. S 83·90, Ency 49.2. The Homoeopath, 10, 3.70.3, My emphasis; xxxi.

42'

In Bhattacharyya's book. "thepulse is the real totaHty behind amass of complicated symptoms andsufferings •.. .'·-for which most horn-oeopaths in India have heretofore notbeen able to prescribe the indicatedremedy. "When this pulse is tackledwith sufficient skill the disease mustdisappear." (xxv) Clinically speaking.then. the anti-canon of pulse-pres-cribing appears to constitute the fac-tor in Ayurvedic tridosha which Bhat-tacharyya has determined to be thecrucial one: "Some types of pulserequire specific [homoeopathic?] me-dicines whatever the disease [that is.the symptoms?] may be... Instead ofgoing for symptom similarity, this;[pulse method] is more reliable."(75) Anti-canon has to be theright expression here, provided weare to take at his word the judgmentof a prolific homoeopathic writer.himself something of a guru amongEnglish-language readers, Harris L.Coulter, Ph.D.

If hornoeopathv is not to be shiftedfrom its reliance on symptoms tosome other basis (in which caseit would cease being hornoe opa-thy). the method of registeringsvrnotorns set forth by Hahnemannand Hering and practiced for morethan 175 ve rrs will have to bs letalone, It cannot bs criticized asinherently false or inaccurate even

1. HLC HS & MM 48,

2. Manning 118.

Bu/I. Ind. lnst, Hist. Med. Vol. XXI

though •.. , it is sometimes difficuktto apply, 1

To this day. it needs be added. theOriental Medical Doctor (OMD) putsenormous store by the ancient pulsereading. It brings him in touch withhis patient's "internal environment"for much the same reason as theveid:s pulse taking does.

In Chinese medicine. however.there are twenty-eight basic pulsequalities to detect: 'slow', 'fast','empty'. 's lipperv', wrrv , and'irregular'. Each of these ..signifies a different disharmony ...z

Put another way. the English-language Hindu who might read TheScience of Tridosbe in 1975 or later(thirty or more years after Bhattach-aryya originally composed the articlesfrom his dispensary in Baroda) wouldhave far fewer (if any) qualms than aclassical homoeopath might have.Besides the growing disenchantmentwith things European, there is anothercontextualizing factor. this one aninvariable. When one goes to a gurufor guidance. this wise man knowsjust where one is on the traditionalpath, just where one has to go next.just what one must do to get there.and he does not withhold himselfemotionally from the disciple. The"doctor" guru Bhattacharyya tellshis disciple/reader that tactile-pulse


diagnosis; is the one sure path to"finding the true simillimum", and,what is more, it is not laborious. Heprofesses to restore, if not create,confidence in blighted healing voca-tions. Ayurvedic tridosha "willstrengthen homoeopathy in variousWays and confer great power in thefeeble hands of the Hornoeopath."

43

usual ones, recently set forth inHomoeopath as follows:

Echoing the human mind, and ourneeds when unwell, at least halfof these demands are not analv-sable in a rational way. They arelinked to emotion, to the art ofmedicine, to the spirit of ancienthealing rituals. to magic. Thesethings are difficult to talk aboutbut easy to recounise.!Negi's statement implies they

received the same kind of gratificationBhattacharyya himself did: Nearly all Several questions come to the forehis patients that were prescribed here. In the period before Indepen-homoeopathic medicines by the dance which is covered in this Bengalitridosha method "improved with the healsr considered a doctor saint invery first dose." They expressed Baroda? If so, was he viewed assurprise. They were unable to believe unique or rather representative? And,"that it was a m sdicine ". No reason was his superimposition of trldoshafor this circumstance being provided, on homoeopathy an instance of self-the reader is left to infer, their surprise conscious theory or was it a responsewas due to: its minuteness; the to wider opinion? That is, wasinfrequency of its application, or Benoytosh Bhattacharyya mining a(most likely) its nondietary quality. seam of Ayurvedic medicine or promo-It was improbable that many of ting his personal brand of medicinalBenoytosh's charity patients would empiricism? A perusal of The Journalhave grasped much about the rules of Ayurvedic Medicine conducesgoverning the tridosha curative this historian towards the miningmethod, for these emerged from "our hypothesis. Practising a Western artAyurvedic books", themselves virtu- of healing after 1914-18 meant facingally inaccessible to the uneducated. a world of dissolved or dissolvingStill, as persons living in a specific certainties. Rather than an objectivesocial and cultural milieu, they might scientific truth, homoeopathy couldwell have divined the message: "the ba seen by some of its practitioners--pulse beating at the root of the thumb and not alone in the Provinces andis the witness to the Soul." (xxii) States of India -- as a culturally con-The demands they placed on the tingent theory susceptible to reformu-pulse doctor would have been the lation along tradition-legitimated1. Reilly' Doctors and Complementary Therapists ... Prepvrinq for the Journey"

Homoeopath Supplement, Sept, 1990, 10.

44

guidelines. Hence it seems safe toassume that Bhattacharyya's allusionsto "radi-esthesia" (itself sometimescapable of helping to save a doctor's"reputation ') and to testing apatient's "horoscope under the pen-dule" constitute post-Independencedevelopments not of his own creation.(xxix-xxx)

In the final reckoning, Bhatta-charyya qualifies as both a directand a collateral descendant ofMahendralal. For both healers thepractice of homoeopathy was subor-dinated to a higher, somewhatdistinct intellectual order: science forthe one, orientology for the other.Yet in another, perhaps more telling,sense, Bhattacharyya qualifies as acollateral descendant. The Bengalihomoeopathfinder would have pro-bably deemed Bhattacharvvaa treatiseas a sincere, yet dogmatic, attempt atsvncretizaticn impelled by the worthyobjective to procure more effectivetreatment for patients. Nor could hehave expected anything else from aguru who was consciously treadingLord Buddas middle path of compro-mise: "there is no difference betweenscience of medicine and religionbecause both lead men to the samegoal." (24) Further, it seems doubtfulthat Mahendralal, would have con-doned mixing medicines - - for onereason at the least: when mixed,medicines are not capable of beingproved or tested for their curativeproperties. Finally, he might have

Butt, ind, Inst Hist. Med. Vol. XXI

detected some incongruence between"narmonlzatlon" and superimposition- (the reduction of one to another?)-itself at variance with "the basicHindu viewpoint" assumed byBwardaj (287),

However that may be, since the1940s Mahendralal's position hasgained few adherents while the notionBhattacharvya advocated has becomeindistinquishable from the homoeo-pathic mainstream -- if that term maybe deployed for a broad penumbra oftriadic or tridosha descendants evidentnowadays among a tangle of noncla-ssical homoeopathic constructions.Concurrently, orthodox homoeopathyin India, the term for empiricallyscientific therapeutics which wasgiven currency by Dudqe on andHughes a century ago, has beenrelegated to one distant pole on thecontinum. Indeed, its most articulatespokesman died in Calcutta a decadeago

At once relevant and relevant to'"The Three Cosmic Elements in Horn-oeopathy" are a number of piquantarticles penned by an American pulsereader himself far more the rogueelephant than Bhattacharyya appearsto have been. Dr. Eli G. Jones(1850- i 934) published these in TheHornoe opethic Recorder 1914-18; anaturopath has gathered some ofthem under the title Reading the Eye,Pulse and Tongue for the IndicatedRemedy (i 980). It is the view of


this editor. Wade Boyle, N.D .• thatJones was a medicinal "maverick,refusing to recognize any higherauthority than what worked to helphis patients." (iii) A svstematic prag-matist, Jones had "mastered the ma-teria medicas of all five medical prac-tices of his day-allopathic. homoeo-pathic, Eclectic. Physio-medical, andBiochernlc=-bv practising each exc-lusively for five years." (iii) Wadeimplied that Jones' coziness with apentad of pharmacopoeias did not sig-nify adherence to any single organi-zing principle at all. Jones' onlyallusion to Hahnemann is noncom-rnital, He has the founder enunciate:"A physician who fails to use everymeans in his power to cure hispatient is not doing his whole dutyto his patient." Moreover. it seemsdoubtful that Jones would havedefined each individual's illness. asHahnemann did. in terms of a cura-tive remedy. 1

Jones went on to quote the Americanfounder of the "botanical practice"school (c. 1820). Dr. Wooster Beach,"who used to advise his students to'investigate' the remedies of allschools of medicine and select anyremedy that might be of value ... "(81) Besides having discovered pulsereading. Jones wrote:

I have also made another disco-very, that there is a great differ-ence between the pulse of the

45right and left wrist. The pulse ofone wrist will tell us of the vita-lity. the constitution of our pati-ent. the pulse of the other wristwill tell us of the local disease orinjury (whatever it may be). thereal the true condition of the sickperson '" What I know has beenlearned from the book of experi-ence •... (3. 5)

In 1915 he wrote:In 1891 I saw a case of ... someuterine difficulty .. Upon readingthe pulse. I found it full. quick.irregular and compressible. whichis the pulse of Baptisia ..Undermy treatment she got well. (18)

On a case of strangulated hernia;I found a full, bounding pulse •...I prescribed Tr. Belladonna 3x. 15drops in half a glass of water.teaspoon once in a half hour. inalteration (sic) with Tr. Nux Vom-ica 3x •... I had some green tob-acco leaves wilted in warm water.and placed over the inflamedparts. In less than an hour the her-nia was reduced; another life wassaved without an operation. (19)

Jones' topical application was nothomoeopathic; his drugs were. lowdilutionist ones that are registered inthe Pure Materia Medica.

I read not long ago how themodern physician diagnoses dis-eases. He counts the pulse. takes

i. HLC II 575.

46the temperature, examines theurine. the feces and the vomitus.He probably thought of all the dis-eases the patient might have anddidn't. so he came to the conclu-sion that she had ulceration of thestomach. All this, of course, tooksome time. Meanwhile the pati-ent was 'watchful waiting' forthe verdict! In sharp contrast [aformer Jones student would makehis diagnosis in] five minutes •...simply by knowing how to readthe eye. pulse and tongue as ~hadtaught him (25}

In his last article of 1918 Jones con-cluded:

If we find the pulse hard andquick, Tr. Bryonia will be indi-cated. There are certain symp-toms that go with each of theabove [15} remedies that makethe indication for the remedy justas much stronger, but the studentof materia medica should learn tolead the pulse, for in nine casesout of ten it will tell him whatremedy is indicated. (86)

To summarize, it gratified Jonesto tell pupils to keep their watchespocketed. "You cannot be countingthe pulse and reading it at the sametime." (2) Jones was an eclectic(as distinct from eclectic, a systemoriginated by John Scudder. c. 1888).His absolute certainty in the sound-ness of his method, which he calledDefinite Medication, equalled Bhatta-

Buf/. Ind. Inst. Hist. Med. Vol. XXI

charyya's in that of the tridosha sys-tem. By virtue of consistently pres-cribing low dilutions, nevertheless,Jones cannot be likened to the BengaliAyurvedFc homoeopath. Jones' pres-criptions implied an answer diametri-cally different from Bhattacharyya'sto what the latter called the "oft-discussed problem: what is medicine,especially Homoeopathic?" Joneswould have ventured nothing like thecategorical answer Bhattacharyyaprovided:

. potentized medicine is not amedicine at all in its gross sense.Like an other tangible things inthe world, in its ultimate state thepotentized medicine is nothing buta cosmic ray of certain visible orinvisible colour. (xxxvii)

The citation testifies to an affi-nity, the conceptual one, betweenthe Ayurvedic and the Hahnemanniansystems of medicine. Owing in largepart to its doctrinaire tenor, and insmall part to its inconsistencies andcontradictions (which often go handin hand with the former). "The ThreeCosmic Elements in Homoeopathy"is analogous to Hshnernann's cano-nical works though it cannot be cor-related with them. In line with Coul-ter's strictu re, it does not place theBengali guru among Hahnernannsfaithfuls. Still by inserting, if notquite incorporating, into his systemthe traditional tactile-pulse diagnosis,Bhattacharyya's treatise must be rated


highly important in the Bengali,hence the Indian, context.

That granted, it is hard to sayhow much its message penetratedinto the ranks of "lesser mortalsdubbed as unqualified-" of thoseregistered with a State Board on thebasis of experience and allowed topractise. Lt. Col. (Dr.) R. S. Negi(his own ordering of the two honori-fics) rendered the following judgmenta decade after the Indian edition ofBhattacharyya's book saw publica-tion :

... the science and art of Homoeo-pathy has been kept alive not bythe qualified homoeopaths. butby the lesser mortals dubbed asunqualified. It was their devotionto Homoeopathy [and their] stead-fastness and sincerity of purposethat kept the trail blazing andmade India a foster home forHomoeopathy. They produced agalaxy of luminaries in the Iield.!

The Babu Dutt stands out, the firstof these lesser mortals, and the doc-tor Bhattacharyya, one of the lumi-naries The latter qualifies as a colla-teral rather than a direct descendantof Dr. Mahendralal Sircar.

Probably tha last in Mahendra-lals short line of qualified Bengalihomoeopaths was Dr. Bejoy KrishnaSarkar (1901-1981). He was born

47

three years before Mahendralal died,and one year after Hughes died.Bejoy Krishna practised allopathyseven years until turning for good tohomoeopathy and in due courseearned a diploma at the State FacultyIn Homoeopathic Medicine (1945).In personal matters even more reti-cent than Mahendr atal, whom hecalled the "real" founder of homoeo-pathy in India, he disclosed nothingabout a "conversion." He was inequal parts voracious reader, prolificwriter, persuasive teacher, and rest-less editor of works in English andBengali (Homoeopathic Prasanga) .His most popular book carries the apttitle, A Critical Commentary onOrganon. To his close reading ofthe entire Hahnernannian corpus, hebrought a needed burst of commonsense-a cant phrase dear to Anglo-Indians and in short supply amonganglophone homoeopathic writers;since the Dudgeon/Hughes era thesehave shown "an unfortunate tend-ency to copy from one another uncri-tically" and consequently to lack themollifying perspective of the historianBejoy Krishna proved himself to be.2More explicitly than the Bengalihomoeopath-finder, Mahendralal andBejoy Krishna sounded rather certainthat his own teaching dealt with the"practical problem of relieving thesick by empiric recipes." (22) Trueto bhadralok type, then, Sarkar (as hewill be called here) deemed "Lord

1. HG, March 1985, 104.2. Campbell 70,

48Bacon. the greatest liberator ofhuman reason ... [whose] InductiveLogic and Nov um Organum inaugu-rated the modern scientific era. ,.

The encomium leaves no doubtabout which "face" of Homoeopathyhe identified the founder Hahnemannwith. the "scientific" not the "meta-physical one." Sark ars standpointdeparts sharply from that of Dr. Jne-nendra Noth Kanjilsl (b. 1909). alsoa prolific writer. tireless educator.and pundit prominent on the Homoe-opathic scene in Calcutta. Both phy-sicians were members of the All IndiaInstitute of Homoepathy (Sarkar asPresident). Both served as editor ofHahnemannian Gleanings. It is likelythat Sarkar did not much care for itseponymous title. By Sarkar's lightshomoepathy involves "no dogmaticfaith but is a statement of facts."Conversely it cannot be a "theory"such as the long since explodedspontaneous-generation one whichJames T. Kent subscribed to. (xi.340) Predictably enough. Sarkar washesitant to "equate Homoeopathy.Hahnernanns discovery, with Hahne-rnennism", (viii) and in respect tothe "dynamic" principle, Sarkar rem-ained "undecided" to the end. deno-minating it the "potency problem."

In order to show that from thevery start homoeopathy had been "amedicine of experience. not of specu-

Bull. Ind. tnst. Hist. Med. Vol. XXI

latlon." Sarkar addressed head onthe thorny experimentation V5, inspi-ration issue. Perhaps echoing a pro-position advanced by Karl Popper.the Bengali homoeopath briskly tic-ked off the Saxon physician's celeb-rated draft of "good china" in 1790as a "chance experiment" followedup by a "provisional theory," whichhe had "hit upon" somehow, that iswithout reliance upon any theory.and which in his methodical way hesubjected to extensive testing withdemonstrable results. In so doinghe rectified the scholastic error Cullenhad fallen into, the very sort Baconrailed against: to fly "from a fewinstances and particulars ... to themost general conclusions or the prin-ciples of the science •.. ."l In goodtime Hahnemann "then converted theinduction to deduction and said :'Let likes be treated by likes' (Simi-lia Similibus Curentur). Thus Horn-oeopathy was born in 1796," and tothe last its founder was bent on vali-dating the similar-symptom principle.To that end Hahnemann kept acqui-ring data incrementally after 1796.the Organon getting published onlyin 1810.

Sarkar's line of reasoning fromhypothesis to phenomena and on toscientific certainty has little incommon, per contra, with Kanjilal'stacit assumption: homoeopathic doc-trine. fixed and determinate, came

1. HlC II 121.

Bengali Context - Donald Warren

into being virtually at the criticalmorns nt Hahnemann underwent hisNewton-like inspiration. Of a sud-den the Saxon doctor perceived thatCullen's rationalist premise regardingthe efficacy of "good china" (quin-ine) had to be wrongheaded, andproceeded to swallow the substanceso as to make his point cogent-proof of the founder's genius. WhileKanjilal's Cartesian-like cast of minddoes make allowance for observationand experiment- "gross and superfi-cial facts" he labels them-he holdsthat the inerrancy of homoeopathicdoctrine rests on its consonance withthe inner experience of his fellowrrun, literally on the

standpoint on the spiritual/mentalaspect of the living beings. [TheHahnemannian is] a complete sys-tem of Medicine, holding dimen-sions far vaster and deeper thanany other, and hence [it is] themost difficult to master. (122)

Grosso modo, the aversion the cau-sat-oriented Kanjilal bears for "one-eyedmechanical materialism" seamshis What Every Homoeop eth mustKnow to Save Homoe opethv for theHuman Race.

Their sharply distinct inductivevs. deductive modes of perceptionnotwithstanding, Sarkar and Kanjilalare agreed on one critical matter:thevitalistic principle constitutes the

1. BHJ, 1940. 64.

49

crux of the healing art. Both Ben-galis take for granted the existenceof an energy - "vital" as againstliving - that is not so sensible toapprehension as either body or mindis. Of the three entities composingthe human being-body, mind, lif~-the last named, "the vital one is themost relevant to us physicians," Sar-kar states. To Bhattacharyya, it isnothing short of "The Universal Lawof Life."

In 1940 Sarkar offered two pre-rnises to explain why the Hinduscience of Life, ayu vede, has actuallyfilled the gap or defect (dosha?)extant in the homoeopathic law ofcure. The first was a variant of thehistorical premise which BenoytoshBhattacharyya had begun to harp onin Baroda sometime in the 1930s:Hahnemann and his successors con-centrated their attention on thephysical and the mental/emotionalfactors in dlsease-cure: they virtuallyexcluded from consideration the thirdfactor, "the category of Life." It isregarding this crucial matter, Sarkarexplained. that "Avurveda scores inhaving made a scientific study ofLife and elucidated general principles"susceptible to easy comprehension. 1

"All the dynamic functions" of nor-mal living have been "observed, ana-lysed, and classified"-and not in alexicon circumscribed by terms properto the physical sciences. Ayurvedic

50

data, he imp' idS, may still be tappedfor 1herapeutic ends. Years after-wards, incidentally. and deploying anargument that brings to mind Bhatta-charyya's strictures on similar-svmo-tom prescribing. Sarkar would write:"Homoeopathy instead of basingitself on naturalities constructs itself

.on the abnormal conditions of IHeand health"; the narrow focus itplaces on symptoms, does not allowit to come to grips with the dynamic,that is, with the spiritual terms of life,]But, as addressed to a British reader-ship in 1940, the gravamen of hishistorical charge was that Hahne-marin's vitalism was not carried farenough. In the end. homoeopathyhas been caught in a conceptual bindof sorts. insufficiently positivistic tosatisfy allopathic assumptions, insu-fficiently vitalistic to fulfil the moda-lities that the Hindu science of lifemandates.

His other premise. a philosophi-cal one related to the historical one.rests on a (Hindu?) axiom that "truthis relative, differing in science, lite-rature, art, biology etc.." so therehave to be "different degrees of rea-lity," As for medicine itself, since"it is far from clear that the nature ofthe stimulus imparted by a drug ...can be expressed in terms of Chemis-try or Physics," Hahnemann postula-ted an idea of sickness not bound bythe dicta of positivism, namely, "a

Bufl. Ind. Ins! Hist. Med. Vol. XXI

derangement of the vital force ... [H]e[thereupon] studied the human bodyfrom the standpoint of life" -doubt-less correctty, in the Hindu context. (58)At home in Europe, however, Hahne-mann came to feel boxed in bymechanistic concepts and modes ofexpression, and was "gradually ledto the recognition of 'dvnamis'," aconcept he did not-to homoeopa-thy's cost-pursue methodically. theway he had done with respect to theprinciple of symptom similarity.

Predictably enough, at this con-troversial juncture. the heretoforeconslstsnttv incisive Sarkar begins tofalter in his exposition. He seems toteeter on the slippery slope of the"central life-mechanism. the truthlong known in ancient India andrediscovered by Hahnemann." Tothis writer, Sarkar's mode of analysisdiverges from the Baconian model,which appeals to the "evidence" byadhering to sense perception,which relies on what an Indian ana-lyst denominates "the outer vision ofreality "2 Sarkar now adverts to analternete model for which the "evid-ence" derives from an inner visionof reality. whereby it is axiomaticthat "the character of the stimulusbelongs to the domain of life, anddistinctive differences in modes ofoperation are obvious." (57) How-ever unintentionally. Sarkar showsthat in order to provide a rationale

1. Essays on Horn. 400.2. Kakar 29.


for "the dynamic plane according toHahnomannian terminology," a Bac-onian is liable to spot a metaphysicalcomponent or else to resort to somesuch himself. (526-7) The founder'snecessarily inadequate locution, dyn-amis, made "the best of a bad job,"in the Bengali's phrasing, inferen-tially his own recognition of a non-material realm of consciousness. Toconfound matters, Hahnernanri's em-ploys the ambiguous term "dynamis"in two contexts: one, it connotesthe chemically inexplicable process oftransforming a substance into a"potentized" remedy, itself a propo-sition problematic to Sarkar; and two,dynamis signifies the "vital force,"parlance that Hahnemann and othermedical writers had routinely usedfor natural self-healing-only nowdvnamia/vital force has come toentail a doctrine mediated by a"spirit-like" notion, neither materialnor immaterial. With postulation ofthe vitalistic concept, the "evidence"has taken on the burden, if not thelift, of metaphysics. and passedtherewith out of the range coveredby Baconian paradigms.

A French doctor of hamoeopathyJ. Fallex, who has composed a detai-led analysis of L' Homoeopathie et sesrapports avec te Philosophie Hindue,provides a fairly concise descriptionof the vitalistic notion, itself derivedfrom aguru of his own, "man Maitre,Ie Docteur Das de Calcutta,"

57

L'univers est 'vivant' dans satotalite aussi bien que dans chacunde ses composants. Le PRANAest la force vitale qui animine toutce qui est vivant; notre individunest qu'un cas particulier dans laVie Universelle, regie par la LaiUniverselle. (1961, 7)

Yet Campbell captures the notionbest, by way of a striking metaphor:"Potentized medicines were, in asense. the vita I force [or as Dr. Daswould say, prana] captured in abottle," (49) Arguably, it is owing tosuch a purported linkage betweenvital force and high - dilutionist("potentized") remedies that Sarkar,himself an eloquent exponent forvital force, makes no reference to theHindi term prene : the vital-energycomponent which Ayurvedic doctorslocate in the head.

Shen, which is stored by or in theheart, is a Chinese medical theory,

She n, an elusive concept to conveyin English, is best translated asthe 'spirit: or even more loosely,the 'personality.' Shan is thespirit that makes each one ofus a unique, thinking and feelingperson.]

Another reason that Sarkar'sexposition mystifies has to lie in someambiguities, to a reader like myself,inherent in Hindu culture. The

1. Manning 210.

52Bengali homoeopath draws the sub-scriber of The British Journal ofHomoeopathy into an Ayurvedicambience, quite familiar to himself,yet as mystery-laden to the westernmind as the aura that envelops theChristian trinity--rightly denominateda 'mystery," that is a doctrine thatcannot be fully understood. "Thevitalistic doctrine with all its falseintellectual mysticism," runs theaphorism minted by Rene Dubos,himself celebrated for puncturing anumber of allopathic truisms. (105)All told, the vitalist proposition has along history in the West, probably alonger one in Hindu philosophy/religion.

The very word for health in Hindi--svastha, from the root 'swa' (I)and 'estbe' (stable) -- impliessomething which is resident, pre-sent or stable in the T: not in thebody, not in the mind, not in thevarious organs or selves, but inthe underlying etmsn.!

Sarkar's exposition of "the existenceof the central life mechanism", onemay say, must have satisfied a Bengalireadership predisposed to an innervision of reality, to those "laws whichcan be taught but cannot be discove-red" (Zimmermann). It may havealso satisfied a British readership thatwas no longer dominated by the Old

Bull. Ind. Inst. Hist, Med, Vol, XXI

Guard's empirical/pathological inter-pretation of homoeopathy, But itcannot fully satisfy the historian oranthropologist attempting to weigh"evidence" in a disinterested mode,which is to say, in a mode that admitsof an adjunct realm of consciousnessso long as the material realm isperceived as the primary vision ofreality. From this conventiallyWestern viewpoint, the Bengali'sexposition comes down to a defenceof a notion specific to Ayurveda/homoeopathy rather than constitutingan explanation of a theory generic tomedicine as a whole. In this regard,a leading exponent has the last word:

Homoeopaths recognize that 'ex-planations' why homoeopathicremedies (or anything) work donot prove anything This is whyhomoeopaths tend to devote moreof their attention to 'how' theremedies work rather than 'why.'2

All the same, in the last centurycircumstances were quite different,and here again Campbell is helpful:"homoeopaths after Hahnemann wereled by their temperaments" to renderan either-or judgment upon thefounder's vitalistic doctrine. (45) Itwould be either disvalued as a per-nicious abstraction floating througheras of prepositlvist medicine or prizedas that "plus something else" (Bur-

1. Kakar - 33.2, Dana Ullman, Homoeopathic Heartbeat, Dec 1980,4.

Chronic diseases, Pref. to fourth Vol. II.


roughs) without which the animateworld can make no sense, cosmicallyconsidered. For India a positive andupdated judgment was rendered inThe Science of Tridosha. Tile ThreeCosmic Elements in Homoeopethv .By inserting dynamis into the Ayurve-die context, the Bengali guru intendedto accomplish two interrelated things:to reclaim the homoeopathic practi-tioner from 8 recondite system ofmedicine European in origin and todeliver him back to the traditionalsanctuary of religion/science. Themessage Bhattacharvve sent outappeared to be: homoeopathy is not aprofession but a rule of life.

The vitalist dimension, whichcould be called Hindu harmonialism,falls under the rubric essentialism inthis study, because the concepteffectively dissolves the outer-inneroppositions or the objective-subjec-tive polarities inherent in muchmedical cognition. It happens thatessentialism's want for a better turnrecalls Hahnernann's lament over"medicinal attenuations-- pity thereis no appropriate word in anylanguage." 1 If nothing else thegraceless term "essentialism" blendseasily with the hyperbolic mode ofdiscourse deployed by Sanskritists--and to a lesser extent by Hahneman-nians. To start with, the nature ofessentialism is marked, paradoxicallyer oujh, by dichotomy, its very

53

antithesis. Bhattacharyya opens thematter of coming to grips with theterm when he formulates an anti-essentialist axiom: To be deemedtrue, a science defines itself by wayof a bipolarity, consisting in "non-essential and essential knowledge."And it is the latter that lies

at the root of Cosmic Evolution.This is true knowledge- ... the Veda,the know/edge of elements or theknow/edge of Brahman. One whoknows Brahman attains immorta-lity.2

Said knowledge is of course mediatedby Ayurvedic tridosha, whose rulescomprise a template of sorts. Whenthis gets superimposed upon thesystem of homoeopathy, as Bhatta-charyya has demonstrated, symptomsget reduced to the insignificance ofthe non-essential plane, whereaspulse movements are situated on theessential one.

All the same, by recourse to asimilar mode of dichotomizing, hom-oeopathy too can be construed asessentialist. Its own template, theOrganon, also contains somethingakin to the know/edge of elementsor the know/edge of - the "vitalprinciple" in lieu of Brahman. Moreto the point, homoeopathy too dist-inguishes between non-essential andessential factors. These might be

1. LW 823.2. XiX emph asis mine.

54certain procedures that have decisiveconsequences respecting the efficacyof drugs. Put more concretely, thefact. that medicinal substances rou-tinely get diluted in the course oftheir preparation is not deemed essen-tial because in that unelaborotedmode they cannot stimulate the vitalforce; only when they get dilutedand succussed in a carefully prescri-bed manner. which Hahnemann him-self discovered. are they perceived tobe quint-essential. The nonpositi-vistic or philosophic distinction thatclassical homoeopatha draw betweenthe two procedures of medicine dilu-tion. allopathic versus homoeopathic,stands forth as a self-evidently validproposition : one is non-essential.the other essential.

The philosophic outlook thatnuances essentialism correlates clo-sely with the mode of cognition"which." in the awkward syntax ofthe Sanskrit scholar Max Mueller(quoted above) "[ is] independentof, nay in spite of, sense and reason,[ and] enables man to apprehend theinfinite." I It also shades Rasa, whichrates as the aesthetic counterpart ofthat cognitive mode. Rasa "is notan objective quality of beauty or formby which the artist is judged 'good'or 'bad' it is the aesthetic mode oftranscendence-- .. ~" To transcend adichotomy is suggestive of being atthe core of things. A Hindu image,

Bu!!. Ind. In st. Hist. Med. Vol. X XI

dear to Joseph Campbell, illustratesthe nenjudqemsntal aspect of thsessentialist outlook. It shows atriangle symbolizing the mother god-dess. with a dot at the cent. r. "whichis the energy of the transcendententering the field of time." (48) Thiskind of infinitude dimension isperceived to lie beyond the range ofallopathic, though not of homoeopathicor Ayurvedic, comprehension; it justis on a plane apart from, and possiblyloftier--or "deeper" to use Kanjilal'sword-- than, any given dyadic one.All in all, the essentialist mentalitymediates Hindu culture and condi-tions Bengali doctoring; the Hinduessentialist and the homoeopathicvitalist perception imposes its own,an infinitudinal, construction onreality-- itself perceived in otherclimes and times as having a dicho-tomized or dyadic basis.

To offset the successive abstrac-tions brought up this far, the writerhastens to present a few concreteand pertinent instances of the pan-human trait to dichotomize. Theyare emblematic of this persistingtendency of ours, itself morepronounced in the analyzing Occidentthan in the synthesizing orient Totake a familiar case in point. Stangle'sintroduction to Bhattacharvva's trido-sha treatise gives prominence to aconcept "the doctor" did not see fitto dwell upon himself :

1. Kaufman 101.2. Kakar 31.

Bengali Conte xt - Donald Warren

In the development of the termsfire and water throughout thebook, it will be observed thatpolarity is indicated, the polespositive and negative of all formsof energy and matter; and airconsidered as representinq theneutral or axial centre common toboth. l

Stangle's statement misrepresents,however slightly, Bhattacharvva'sthesis, which is "the harmony of thecosmic elements." The shadingStangle gives to it seems indicativeof our Western bias toward positingoppositions that others might notperceive or else have managedsomehow to transcend. The Frenchsocial philosopher Michel Foucault isinstructive on this matter of bipolarity.For the purpose of classifying anddiagnosing patients, he notes, medi-cal practitioners (in the West) drawcategorical distinctions betweenhealthy and ailing, sane and mad.Young Hahnernann himself minted aflat-out opposition, homoeopathy-all-opathv, which has remained in placein India to this day. Some othereither-or dyads current in the later1800s included: outward - inwardsigns of disease, "heroic" - "moral"treatment, homoeopathic- Hahneman-nian ("liberal" parlance), normal-patholog ica I ("reg ular " parlance),Orient-Occident (Indophile BritishOrientalist jargon), and religion-

55science (much used by intelligentsiassensitive to the widening gulfbetween Europe-oriented elites andilliterate masses).

Naturally enough for any givendvsd, the word/term that gets theprime or licit position is a fairlyaccurate index of the author'sculturally determined experience. Toself-styled "moderate" homoeopathscontemplating a low-high dyad, lowdilutionist would connote somethingmanageable, the stable, while highdilutionist used to connote somenon-thing, the unstable. Hahnemannand his coterie of faithful "purists"would contemplate the high-lowbipolarity and proceed to deploy moreforceful expletives, 'half-homoeopaths'and other hornoeopaths, whichserved to vilify homoeopathists whoexpressed their reservations in respectto his vitalistic doctrines.

By and large, though, classicalhomoeopaths were not given to indulgethemselves in oppositional thinkingwhich they regarded as unwarranted,When allopaths argued that non-poisons that are being "proved" donot yield nearly as great a varietyof symptoms as poisons-- therebyinvalidating the premise that mandatestesting drugs on healthy persons--thehomoeopathic answer ran: "thedistinction between 'poisons' and'non -poisona' is arbitrary-- not a

1. My emphasis, iv.

56matter of the essence of the substancebut purely of the quantity ingested."t

In a similar vein, Hahnernann'sdoctoring maintained an intermediaryposition between "active" medicaltreatment, mainstream in the 1820s.and the "nihilist" sort. widespread inthe 18405. The homeopaths' reluc-tance to dichotomize did not sit wellwith the regulars. The allopathicIndian Medical Gazette thereuponlumped homoeopathy with Ayurveda;the one constituted a "system ofabsurd transcendentalism:' the other

yet "another system of falsedoctrine." 2 To repeat. both dynamisand prana fell outside the conven-tional Western dyadic mode ofdiscourse-- matter-mind. sense rea-son. et similia--with which Foucault'sname is associated. Indeed. theancient idea of essentialism, which isto say the attempt to give permanenceto our knowledge and values bypurporting to situate them in someunchanging, cosmic realm, is heldsuspect in the time-oriented, history-minded West. For Foucault. in orderto lend meaning to something, tofind its essence, one seeks itsbeginning and next proceeds to placeit in "the bipolar field of the sacredand the profane, the licit and theillicit, the religious and the blasphe-rneus.:- (Cited by Salman Rushdie."Is Nothing Sacred?," Granta, 31,106- 7) The Western concept of

BUll. Ind. Inst. Hist. Mea. Vol. XXI

essence is not quite comparable toHindu essentialism.

As against the deductive-induc-tive or outer-inner frame of reference,Geertz has confined an examinationof essentialism pretty much to theconcrete. The essentialist mentalityhas looked naturally to traditionalauthority figures. to custom and tolegend, for its inspiration andguidance, The United States anthro-pologist has set Hindu essentialismagainst Bengali <epoch alism;' whichis in large measure the consequencesof having looked purposefully to secu-lar intellectuals. such as Bacon andGalvani, and to recently foundedinstitutions, such as the BritishMedicill Association-- for its modelsto reform Bengali thought andbehavior. Epochalism instills hope,essentialism exudes pride, (249ft) Inline with Geertz' dyadic hypothesis.the nineteenth-century MahendralalSircar and the twentieth-centuryBejoy Krishna Sarkar would beclassifed epochalist, though over theyears each inclined to the essentialistoutlook, the very one that identifiesBhattacharyya and Kanjiial. Thereare of course dangers in affixingdyadic labels, all the more so todaywhen

the notion of an undifferentiated,unchanging Indian tradition, in aland of innumerable languages,

1. HLC HS & MM 46.2. Bhardaj. 287,


almost every faith known to man,and every form of social organi-zation known to anthropologyought to stupefy the imagination.(Rajnarayan Chandavarkar.) 1

Nirad C. Chaudhuri. whose cele-brated autobiography contains not asingle homoeopathic reference, singlesout three characteristics of traditionalHinduism, and these prove to be theconstituent parts of what I ventureto call "reflexive essentialism"-- ananalytical correlative of the "reflexivespiritualism" I have hypothesized(above) for Brazil The characteristicsin question are: the simple, thespirit-like, and the generalizing.

I think [Chaudhury writes] thereis something impel/ing a Hindutowards simpler [simp/ex] inpreference to the more complex,towards the unmerged [dynamis ]in preferance to the emerged[positivism], and towards thegereral [causal Car tes ianisrn ] inpreference to the particular. "(439)

The triad can be perceived, further-more, to correspond rather closelywith the high-dilutionist or rationa-listic mentality that marks present-dayclassical homoeopathy. This is not ofcourse the brand of homoeopathy thatMahendr atal converted to. Hisbhedrelok cast of mind, "epochalist·,in the Geertz lexicon, deliberately set

1. lndia for the English: The New York Review of Books.8 March 1990, 10.

57itself against the basic mental con-structs which Chaudhuri ascribes tothe Hindu personality. Yet when hedied in 1904, it seems unlikely thatthe Bengali homoeopathfinder stillclung to the Hughesian fixation thatthe art of healing could be reducedto an empirical science. From the1880s, conceivably during LordRipon's tenure, Mahendralal wasstirred by two currents then felt inbhedreio k circies: Hindu nationalismnecessarily coupled with its philoso-phical (or psychological) concomitant.reflexive essentialism. This depositMahendra was to factor back into thehomoeopathic equation. In otherwords, low-dilutionism betrayed atendency to drift highwards, as itbecame permeated more and more bytoleration of, if not actual adherenceto, the doctrines of vitalism and evenof potentization. These tap feelingsdeep down-- which the tenets ofempiricism do not do. "Truth is one:'Vedas. "The unity of consciousness,"Mahendralal would say; "the vital isthe most relevant," Sarkar wouldwrite. The doggedly Baconian homo-eopath, one suspects, had internalizedthe essentialist mindset which seemedsecond nature to Bhattacharyya, toKanjilaL and perhaps to Chaudhurv,

To summarize, Bengali hornoeo-pathv, itself originally secularist andrevealing much the same "scientificface" which the English Old Guard

58

showed, graduated toward an essen-tialist outlook-- not hard-edged andsectarian, but he:rmunial and tolerantin a word Hindu-like, The essentialistlineaments of .he traditional Bengalimentality were readily discernible inthe comparatively consis tent waythat Du tt, Bhattecharvva. a.id Kanjilalall dealt with 'the German medicinc'--but were only barely so in thetentative though growing interestMahcndralal evinced for certainaspects of Ayurvedic medicine and inthe convoluted defence Surk er fashi-oned for vital force. Even so, anddespite their differential approaches toHahnernanns psychopharmacology,those bh edrelok who revered thelogic of Bacon and those whoreverenced the wisdom of Ayurvedicdoctors concurred in one perceptionof the founder: he really did redis-cover truths known in ancient India.The Indian-born scholar, Bhardwaj.who has gathned many worthwhiledata concerning the "process of thenaturalization of homoeopathy inIndia," concludes his informativearticle on a note apposite to thiscrosscultural study:

The entrenchment through blindfaith in the words of Hahnemannmixed with an attempt to reconcilehomoeopathy with Hindu beliefssometimes resulted in ridiculouslogic. Whether the logic ofharmonization between Hinduism

Bull. tnd tnst . Hi st Med Voi. XXI

and homoeopathy was faulty ornot is not the issue. It is importantthat the homoeopaths saw noconflict between their system ofmedicine and their religious andcultural beliefs even though thesystem was clearly imported fromthe West. (292)

Homoeopathically speaking. theBengali and American mentalities>otherwise quite dissimilar-- happenedto coincide during the short span ofa decade, 1870-80. The curiouscoincidence occurred at the very timethat most homoeopaths in the UnitedStates were on the verge of divestingtheir doctrine of any traces of the"transcendental." For a shor t spellhigh-born b abus and middleclassfolks were in their distinctive waysbuove d by an essentialist "belief thatforms lie hidden within reality."Their mutual indifference to the Britishempirical sense of things allowed ofone grand perceptlon : no incompati-bility exists between religion andscience. While the Bengali andAmerican mentalities briefly intersec-ted on this cosmic question a centuryago, the two were coming from, andpointing in, distinctive directions. Inthe northeast of colonial Indiahomoeopathy was getting "l modestfoothold; in the northern USA. "theGerman art of healing" was startingto make its precipitous decline frompublic favor,

Bengali Context-Donald Warren 59

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