IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/indeco/v42y2005i1p101-129.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unani medicine in the nineteenth-century public sphere

Author

Listed:
  • Seema Alavi

    (Jamia Millia Islamia University)

Abstract

Unani medicine’s encounter with Western medicine in nineteenth-century north India generated a rich corpus of Unani medical texts in the vernacular Urdu. A new Unani and a new hakim (practitioner of Unani) evolved with an emphasis less on the mastery of the theory and more on the practice of medicine. Urdu newspapers, particularly the Oudh Akhbar, pushed the issues generated by texts on Unani into the public sphere, and it was here that the inevitable tensions between the old family-centred Unani and the new hakim were fought out. Through an engagement with Western medicine in order to contain the threat posed by it, Unani dramatically reshaped and redefined itself as an Indian medical system.

Suggested Citation

  • Seema Alavi, 2005. "Unani medicine in the nineteenth-century public sphere," The Indian Economic & Social History Review, , vol. 42(1), pages 101-129, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:indeco:v:42:y:2005:i:1:p:101-129
    DOI: 10.1177/001946460504200104
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/001946460504200104
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/001946460504200104?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:indeco:v:42:y:2005:i:1:p:101-129. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.