¹ For China and India two interesting studies are Francis Hsu, L. K., Magic and Science in Western Yunnan (New York, 1943)Google Scholar and Marriott, McKim, ‘Western Medicine in a Village of Northern India’, in Paul, Benjamin, ed., Health, Culture and Community (New York, 1955), pp. 239–68.Google Scholar

² Medical subcultures such as homeopathy, nature cures, or faith healing in the West, present a qualitatively different phenomenon. They do not enjoy ‘respectable’ support in their societies, and adherence to them by socially and intellectually respectable figures is dismissed as personal eccentricity. As for the persistence of selective use of primitive medicine by modern leaders in most Asian and African countries, this too is mainly at the private, personal level and not part of their public image and public policy. Cambridge or Sorbonne trained Prime Ministers in Africa may still half believe in certain witch doctor remedies, but they do not support schools and institutes to preserve the witch-doctors’ medical ‘system’.

³ Most supposedly universal medical histories still reveal a strong Western provincialism by giving very cursory treatment to classical Asian medical systems. The most distinguished work on Indian medicine is Filliozat, J., The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and Greek Parallels (Delhi, 1964)Google Scholar. Also useful is Zimmer, Henry, Hindu Medicine (Baltimore, 1948)Google Scholar. Available Western language works on China medicine are quite unsatisfactory. Perhaps still the best survey is Chi-min, Wong and Lien-te, Wu, A History of Chinese Medicine (Tientsin, 1932)Google Scholar. Much more comprehensive and reliable is Ch'en Pang-hsien, Chung-Kuo I-hsueh Shih (A History of Medicine in China) (Shanghai, 1937).Google Scholar

⁴ Filliozat.

⁵ The first chapter of the Udupa Committee report gives a cursory history of the Ayurvedic movement. Government of India, Ministry of Health, Report of the Committee to Assess and Evaluate the Present Status of the Ayurvedic System of Medicine (Delhi, 1959?)Google Scholar. A more comprehensive and analytical account is given in Paul Brass, ‘The Politics of Ayurvedic Education: A Case Study of Revivalism and Modernization in India’, essay prepared for forthcoming volume on Education and Politics edited by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph. There is also the work of Charles Leslie including ‘The Professionalization of Ayurvedic and Unani Medicine’, Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Ser. II, Vol. 30, No. 4 (02, 1968), pp. 559–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘The Rhetoric of the Ayurvedic Revival in Modern India’, Royal Anthropological Institute, Proceedings, No. 82 (05, 1963), pp. 72–3. I am grateful to Professor Leslie for first calling my attention to the Ayurvedic movement and its parallels with developments in China.Google Scholar

⁶ The developments of support for Chinese medicine is discussed in detail in my study, Traditional Medicine in Modern China: Science, Nationalism, and the Tensions of Cultural Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), especially in Part Two, ‘Medicine as a Cultural and Intellectual Issue’, pp. 59–150.Google Scholar

⁷ See his ‘Memorandum on the Synthesis of Indian and Western Medicine’, in Government of India, Ministry of Health, Report of the Committee on Indigenous Systems of Medicine (Delhi, 1948), Vol. 2, pp. 256–77.Google Scholar

⁸ Most of these appear in Ch'en Kuo-fu Hsien-Sheng Ch'uän-chi (Complete Works of Mr. Ch'en Kuo-fu) (Hong Kong, 1952), Vol. 6.Google Scholar

⁹ The use of the term allopathy also dates from the nineteenth century when it was used to distinguish regular Western medicine from homeopathy which has enjoyed considerable popularity in India. The retention of ‘allopathy’ in the Ayurvedists' terminology reflects their concern lest Western physicians appropriate the word ‘scientific’ solely for their own. This, in itself, is a significant indication of value changes in modern India.

¹⁰ ‘Ayurveda and Congress President’, Journal of Ayurveda, Vol. 14, No. 8 (02, 1938), pp. 281–2.Google Scholar

¹¹ ‘Hua-pei Kuo-i Lun-chan Shu-chi’ (‘A Record of the National Medicine Debate in North China’); Ming-jih I-yao (Tomorrow's Medicine), Vol. 1, No. 1 (1935), p. 5.Google Scholar

¹² After partition, this has meant almost entirely Ayurveda. Unani continues to exist in India but it obviously has no appeal to Indian nationalism.

¹³ There are faint echoes of this controversy in Taiwan since 1949, but the Government has generally given unequivocal support to modern medicine. See Croizier, , Traditional Medicine in Modern China, Ch. X.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Brass, , ‘The Politics of Ayurvedic Education’, p. 46.Google Scholar

¹⁵ For example, the third five-year plan allots less than 3 per cent of total health expenditures specifically for Ayurveda. India, Planning Commission, Third Five-Year Plan, p. 651.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Brass, , p. 11.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Leslie, , ‘Rhetoric of the Ayurvedic Revival’, p. 73.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Report of the Committee to Assess … Ayurvedic System of Medicine, 1959, p. 32.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Brass, Paul concludes: ‘The costs to India's medical development have been the failure to provide effective medical relief to the rural areas.’ pp. 53–4.Google Scholar

²⁰ The development of Communist policy on Chinese medicine is detailed in Traditional Medicine in Modern China, Part Three. I also discuss this in ‘Traditional Medicine in Communist China: Science, Communism and Cultural Nationalism’, The China Quarterly (07–09, 1965), pp. 1–27Google Scholar and in my forthcoming anthology, China's Cultural Legacy and Communism (Frederick Praeger Publishers, N.Y., 1969) Ch. XI.Google Scholar

²¹ Mao Tse-tung Hsuan-chi (Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung); Vol. 3 (Peking, 1955), p. 1010.Google Scholar

²² Hsiao-feng, Jen, ‘Criticise Comrade Ho Ch'eng's Error in his Policy Towards Chinese Medicine’, translated in Union Research Service, Vol. 3, No. 20 (06 8, 1956), p. 298.Google Scholar

²³ Unlike in the 1950s, recent praise for Chinese medicine has avoided praising ‘medical experts’—modern-style or traditional. The accolades are for ‘barefoot doctors’ practicing acupuncture or prescribing simple herbals after little or no formal training. See, for example, ‘Rely on the Thought of Mao Tse-tung to Uncover the Great Medical Treasures of the Motherland’, Jen-min Jih-pao, 03 1, 1969 (translated in Survey of the China Mainland Press, No. 4375, pp. 6–11).Google Scholar

²⁴ Hu Shih introduction to K'e-hsüeh yü Jen-sheng Kuan (Science and Philosophy of Life) (Shanghai, 1923), p. 3.Google Scholar