¹ In what follows, I will be writing about India most of the time, rather than all of Asia, though I have drawn some examples from Persia. I have discussed in some detail elsewhere these broad changes, and the reader is referred to these for a fuller analysis and quite large bibliography. See Pearson, M. N., Before Colonialism: Theories on Asian-European Relations, 1500–1730 (Delhi, 1988),Google Scholar and ‘Merchants and States’,Tracy, James D. (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires (New York, CUP, 1991) PP. 41–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² See Wallerstein, Immanuel, ‘Incorporation of Indian Subcontinent into Capitalist World-Economy’, Economic and Political Weekly, XXI (4 01 1986), pp. 28–39;Google Scholar also published in Chandra, Satish (ed.), The Indian Ocean: Explorations in History, Commerce and Politics (New Delhi, 1987), pp. 222–53.Google Scholar The version here is focused on India, and is thus more accessible than the comparable study scattered through his The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730–1840s (New York, 1989).Google Scholar See also Arasaratnam's, S. fine Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast, 1650–1740 (Delhi, OUP, 1986);Google ScholarFurber's, Holden classic, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800 (Minneapolis, 1976);Google ScholarPrakash, Om, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Princeton, 1985);CrossRefGoogle ScholarGupta, Ashin Das and Pearson, M. N. (eds), India and the Indian Ocean, 1500–1800 (Calcutta, 1987).Google Scholar

³ Steensgaard, Niels, ‘The Indian Ocean Network and the Emerging World- Economy, c. 1500–1750’, in Chandra, (ed.), The Indian Ocean, pp. 125–50;Google Scholar cf. Steensgaard, , ‘Asian Trade and World-Economy from the 15th to 18th Centuries’, de Souza, T. R. (ed.), Indo-Portuguese History: Old Issues, New Questions (New Delhi, 1985), PP. 225–35.Google Scholar

⁴ Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, ‘Asian Trade and European Affluence? Coromandel 1650–1740’, review article in Modern Asian Studies, XXII, 1 (02 1988), pp. 179–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ See Tracy, (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires.Google Scholar

⁶ Arasaratnam, p. 137.Google Scholar

⁷ Subrahmanyam, S., ‘Persians, Pilgrims and Portuguese: the Travails of Masulipatnam Shipping in the Western Indian Ocean, 1590–1665’, Modern Asian Studies, XXII, 3 (07 1988), pp. 503–30, and especially 524–30. The quotation is from P. 530CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1580–1800 (CUP, 1988), p. 117;Google Scholar a revised and amplified version was published in Tracy, (ed.), The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, pp. 161–95.Google Scholar

⁹ Habib, Irfan, ‘Merchant Communities in Pre-colonial India’, in Tracy, James D. (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires (CUP, 1990), pp. 371–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Arnold, David, ‘Introduction: Disease, Medicine and Empire’, in Arnold, David (ed.), Imperial Health and Indigenous Societies (Manchester, 1988), p. 2.Google Scholar

¹¹ Previous discussions of this matter were often written by people with better training in medicine than in history, so that they tend to be descriptive rather than analytical. Examples are Gaitonde, P. D., Portuguese Pioneers in India: Spotlight on Medicine (Bombay, 1983);Google ScholarGracias, João Baptista Amancio, ‘Médicos Europeus em Goa e nas cortes Indianas nos séculos XVI a XVIII’, O Oriente Portugues, XXIV–XXV (1939) PP. 335–91;Google Scholar and the various compilations of Jaggi, O. P.: Western Medicine in India (3 vols, Delhi, Atma Ram and Sons, 1979–1980);Google ScholarJaggi, O. P., Medicine in Medieval India, vol. VIII of History of Science and Technology in India (Delhi, Atma Ram and Sons, 1977) (on yunani medicine).Google Scholar and Indian System of Medicine (Delhi, 1974) (on ayurvedic medicine).Google Scholar A good brief overview is Roy, K. K., ‘Early Relations between the British and Indian Medical Systems’, in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine (2 vols, London, 1974, Wellcome Institute), I, 697–703.Google Scholar

¹² Apart from specific works cited in footnotes, in this section I have used as a basic reference Roderick McGrew, E., Encyclopedia of Medical History (London, Macmillan, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar I also found much curious information in Manley, Deborah (ed.), The Guinness Book of Records 1492 (Guinness Publishing, 1992).Google Scholar

¹³ Braudel, Fernand, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, vol. I, The Structures of Everyday Life, The Limits of the Possible (New York, 1979), pp. 78–88;Google ScholarJones, E. L., The European Miracle (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 140–1.Google Scholar On plague, see McGrew, Encyclopedia of Medical History, s.v., and a useful survey of the literature by Roberts, R. S.: ‘The Question of the History of Plague’, in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine (2 vols, London, 1974, Wellcome Institute), II, 1291–4.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Correia-Afonso, John (trans, and ed.), Intrepid Itinerant: Manuel Godinho and his Journey from India to Portugal in 1663 (Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1990), pp.223, 224.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Varthema, Ludovico di, The Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna from 1502 to 1508, ed. Temple, R. C. (London, 1928), p. 63.Google Scholar Generally on syphilis, see Carmichael, Ann G., ‘Syphilis and the Columbian Exchange: Was the New Disease really New?’, in Marques, Mario Gomes and Cule, John (eds), The Great Maritime Discoveries and World Health (Lisbon, 1991), pp. 187–200.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Owen, Norman G. (ed.), Death and Disease in Southeast Asia: Explorations in Social, Medical and Demographic History (Singapore, OUP, 1987), introduction, pp. 4, 12.Google Scholar

¹⁷ For ecological imperialism, a somewhat biological determinist notion anyway, see Crosby, Alfred W., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, 1972),Google Scholar and Crosby, , Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (CUP, New York, 1986).Google Scholar For useful general discussions, see Curtin, Philip D., Disease and Imperialism before the Nineteenth Century (Bell Library, University of Minnesota, 1990) (Bell Lecture no. 28),Google Scholar and Arnold, David, ‘The Indian Ocean as a Disease Zone, 1500–1950’, South Asia, XIV, 2 (1991), pp. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁸ Gaitonde, pp. 82–8; Jolly, Julius, Indian Medicine, 2nd edn (New Delhi, 1977) [1st pub. 1901], p. 3.Google Scholar For recent research on traditional Hindu medicine, seeMeulenbeld, G. Jan and Wujastyk, Dominik (eds), Studies on Indian Medical History (Groningen, 1987).Google Scholar

¹⁹ Isaacs, H. D., ‘Some Clinical Methods used by the Arabs in the Middle Ages’, in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine 2 vols, London, 1974, Wellcome Institute), I, 82–7.Google ScholarThe mixture in Persia was briefly noted by a traveller in 1637Google Scholar, who said: ‘In Physick, or Medicine, they follow the Maxims of Avicenna and their Physicians are all Galenists.’ Olearius, Adam, The Voyages & Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia. Begun in the year MDCXXXIII and finish'd in MDCXXXIX…, trans. Davies, John (London, 1662), p. 338.Google Scholar for yunani medicine in Persia in the seventeenth century, see Fryer, Dr John, A New Account of East India and Persia, ed. Crooke, W. (London, 1909–1915), 3 vols, III, 97.Google Scholar

²⁰ Olearius, p. 338.Google Scholar

²¹ see The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn, s.v. djarrah [surgery].

²² Generally on all this, see Basham, A. L., The Wonder that was India (London, 1963), pp. 500–2,Google Scholar for an excellent summary, and also Basham, A. L. (ed.), A Cultural History of India (Oxford, 1975) pp. 48, 147–50, 438.Google Scholar See also a good survey in Ackerknecht, Edwin H., A Short History of Medicine (Baltimore, 1982), pp. 35–43.Google Scholar For Indian Muslim medicine, see Ikram, S. M., Muslim Rule in India and Pakistan (Lahore, 1966), 2nd edn, pp. 181–3.Google Scholar For Ibn Sina's influence on Indian medicine, see Hameed, Hakim Abdul and Bari, Hakim Abdul, ‘Impact of Ibn Sina's Medical Works in India’, Studies in History of Medicine, VIII (1984), pp. 1–12.Google Scholar

²³ Quoted in Gaitonde, p. 101.Google Scholar

²⁴ Babur, , Babur-Nama, trans. Beveridge, A. S. (New Delhi, 1970), pp. 82, 106–9, 169–70, 246, 399, 400, 511, 543, 608, 657660.Google Scholar

²⁵ Jahangir, , The Tuzuk-i jahangiri, trans. Rogers, A., ed. Beveridge, H. (Delhi, 1968), 2 vols in, I, 330, 243; II, 12–13.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid., II, 43–4.

²⁷ See a useful discussion in Arnold, David, ‘Smallpox and Colonial Medicine in Nineteenth-century India’, in Arnold, (ed.), Imperial Health and Indigenous Societies pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

²⁸ In the late sixteenth century Linschoten said that the ‘plague hath never been in India,’ and his modern editor footnoted: ‘Correct. The plague seems never to have extended beyond Scinde.’ (Linschoten, J. H. van, The Voyage of John Huyghen vanLinschoten to the East Indies (London, 1885), 2 vols, I, 240 and fn.)Google Scholar According to Rawlinson, H. G. the first recorded instance of bubonic plague in India was in 1616Google Scholar but, given Jahangir's familiarity with it, this seems to be far too late a date. Later in the century it was a great killer, raging, for example, in Surat for six years in the 1680s. It caused great mortality among Indians, but Europeans were miraculously exempt. See Ovington, John, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, ed. Rawlinson, H. G. (London, 1929), pp. 203–4 and fn.Google Scholar

²⁹ Jahangir, I, 442, II, 65, 66–7.Google Scholar

³⁰ The following discussion is merely a cursory survey of European descriptions of early modern Indian medicine. In particular, the Portuguese accounts, especially those by d'Orta and Costa, contain copious information on local medical practice in western India in the sixteenth century. I intend to produce a fuller analysis of this matter on some later occasion.

³¹ The Voyage of Nicholas Downton (London, Hakluyt, 1938), p. 135.Google Scholar See pp. 135–6 for an affecting account of a death from the ‘bloudy fluxe.’

³² Browne, John letter of 30 May 1616 in Foster, William (ed.), Letters Received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East (London, 1896–1902), 6 vols, IV, 106–7.Google Scholar

³³ Terry, Edward in Foster, W. (ed.), Early Travels in India, 1583–1619 (Delhi, 1968), p. 310.Google Scholar

³⁴ DrFryer, John, A New Account of East India and Persia, I, 180,Google Scholar and see also Ibid., II, 83–4.

³⁵ Bernier, Françpis, Travels in the Mogul Empire, 1656-1668, trans, and ed. Constable, A. and Smith, V. (London, 1914), pp. 253–4, 338–9.Google Scholar These pages constitute an excellent account of Indian medicine by an informed and experienced observer.

³⁶ When I write of ‘quacks’ and ‘folk medicine,’ I do not mean to be overly influenced by what we think are modern medical methods, and to test the past in accordance with what we, social historians with only a spotty expertise in medicine anyway, think is ‘correct’ and ‘scientific’ practice today. Andrew Wear claims that in his recent edited collection of studies ‘the nineteenth-and twentieth-century values of the medical profession which in past history of medicine had been applied to earlier periods to condemn empirics, quacks, magical and religious practitioners have been discarded. In the process a much richer medical world has been uncovered.’ Wear, Andrew (ed.)Medicine in Society: Historical Essays (CUP, 1992), introduction, p. 2.Google Scholar

³⁷ Correia-Afonso, Godinho, 38; Linschoten, I, 235–6.Google Scholar For the claim that nineteenth- century cholera was new, see Arnold, ‘The Indian Ocean as a Disease Zone’, pp. 7–8. The vexed matter of the newness of cholera in the nineteenth century is too complex to be gone into here, but certainly cholera takes various forms, and it is my understanding that a disease which produced death so quickly from diarrhoea and dehydration can be nothing but some sort of cholera. It is also worth noting that the ‘bloody flux’ was not cholera, as this disease does not produce blood in the stools.

³⁸ John Ovington, pp. 204–5.Google Scholar These accounts point to the Europeans using the hot-iron method as a cure, but an account from the 1750s seems to say this was an Indian remedy, though the observer still thought it worked quite well: ‘There is likewise known on the Malabar-coast chiefly, a most violent disorder they call the Mordechin, which seizes the patient with such fury of purging, vomiting and tormina [?] of the intestines, that it will often carry him off in thirty hours. For this the physicians among the natives know no more eflectuall remedy, than the actual cautery applied to the soles of the feet, the powerful revulsion of which rarely fails of a salutary efficacy.’ Grose, John Henry, A Voyage to the East Indies … to which is added a Journey from Aleppo to Busserah, over the Desert, by Mr. Charmichael, 2nd English edn, 2 vols (London, 1772), I, 250.Google Scholar

³⁹ Kincaid, Denis, British Social Life in India, 1608–1973 (London, 1973), p. 37.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Manucci, Niccolao, Storia do Mogor, or Mogul India (Calcutta, 1966–1967), 4 vols, III, 114, 117. He notes on II, 90, that he simply took up doctoring because the demand was there: ‘little by little I began to turn myself into a physician…é.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, Travels in India of Jean-Bapliste Tavernier, trans. Ball, V. and Crooke, W. (New Delhi, 1977), 2 vols, I, 240.Google Scholar

⁴² Carré, Abbé, The Travels of the Abbé Carré in India and the Near East, 1672–1674 London, Hakluyt, 1947–1948), 3 vols, p. 271.Google Scholar

⁴³ Respectively Letters Received, I, 286, III, 4, and Correia-Afonso, Godinho, p. 37.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Correia-Afonso, John, ‘On the Fourth Centenary of Filippo Sassetti (1540–1588): Scientific Observations from Cochin’, Indica, XXVI (1989), pp. 15–24, esp. p. 19.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Fryer, I, 180.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Arnold, David, ‘Occidental Therapeutics and Oriental Bodies: Bengal, 1800–1860’Google Scholar, typescript of a paper read at a subaltern studies conference, Calcutta, December 1989. An amplified version of this paper will appear as part of Arnold, David, Colonising the Body (Berkeley, 1993).Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Ikram, p. 183.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Lach, D. S., Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. II, book 3 (Chicago, 1977), p. 424.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Careri in Sen, S. N. (ed.), Indian Travels ofThevenot and Careri (New Delhi, 1949), p. 162.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Luillier-Lagaudiers, Nouveau voyage aux grandes Indes, avec une introduction pour le commerce des Indes Orientates, el la description de plusieurs isles, villes, & rivieres, I'histoire des plantes & des animaus qu'ony trouve; avec un traite des maladies particulieres aux pays orientaux, et dans la Route, et de leurs remedes par Mr. D.L.F., Docteur en Medecine, qui a voyage et sejourne dans les principales Villes des Indes Orientales, [pp. 199–236], Rotterdam, 1726. The quotation is from Mr. DLF, p. 213.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Laval, François Pyrard de, The Voyage of François Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, vol. II (London, 1888), p. 13.Google Scholar

⁵² Schurhammer, Georg, Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, vol. II, India (Rome, 1977). P. 96Google Scholar

⁵³ Abbé Carré, Travels, pp. 284–5.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Tavernier, , Travels, I, 160–1.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ovington, pp. 205–6. Yet the hostile Dr Fryer could claim that ‘the Urine they will not look on.’ Fryer, I, 287.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Mr. DLF in Luillier, pp. 216–17.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Fryer, I, 288. It is another good example of Fryer's biased attitude that he tells on the previous page that Indian doctors ‘pretend to understand the pulse…’ yet now it seems all the English in Surat trusted this doctor to do exactly this. The matter is complicated, for Ovington at the same time and place also claimed ‘I could never learn that our Indian physicians could pretend to that wonderful Knowledge in the Pulse, which those in China could confidently boast of…’, Ovington, p. 206.Google Scholar Yet as we saw above, it seems that Indian doctors monitored the pulse from the thirteenth century.

⁵⁸ Abbé Carré, Travels, p. 345.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 367.

⁶⁰ Ovington, p. 205.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Correia-Afonso, Godinho, p. 70.Google Scholar

⁶² Patterson, T. J. S., ‘The Transmission of Indian Surgical Techniques to Europe at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine, 2 vols (London, 1974, Wellcome Institute), I, 694–6.Google Scholar

⁶³ For a good discussion, see Pagel, Walter, ‘Paracelsus: Traditionalism and Medieval Sources’, in Stevenson, Lloyd G. and Multhauf, Robert P. (eds), Medicine, Science and Culture (Baltimore, 1968), pp. 51–75.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Wear, Andrew, ‘Introduction’, in Wear, Andrew (ed.), Medicine in Society, p. 5.Google Scholar See also on these general changes other articles in this excellent collection, and two other compilations: Wear, Andrew, French, Roger and Lonie, I. M. (eds), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century (CUP, 1985),Google Scholar and French, Roger and Wear, Andrew (eds), The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (CUP, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the fifteenth entury, see a short useful study by French, Roger: ‘Medicine in Western Europe during the Fifteenth Century’, in Marques, Mario Gomes and Cule, John (eds), The Great Maritime Discoveries and World Health, pp. 39–54.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Clark, George Sir, A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London (Oxford, 1964–1966), 2 vols, I, 61, 337.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Adas, Michael, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1989), pp. 6, 21–2.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Ibid., pp. 55–6.

⁶⁸ Arnold, , ‘Introduction’, p. 11.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Arnold, ‘Occidental Therapeutics and Oriental Bodies’.

⁷⁰ Bernier, pp. 253–4, 338–9.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 339.

⁷² Ibid., pp. 338–9.

⁷³ Markham, Clements, Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India by Garcia da Orta [a translation of Conde de Ficalho, Lisbon, 1891–5] (London, 1913), no. 36.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ See, as one more example to add to those already quoted from Fryer in the text, Fryer, I, 285–6, where he begins a long description of disease in Surat by saying ‘The Diseases reign according to the Seasons, the North blowing, Bodies are rendered firm, solid and active by exhausting the Serous Humours…’. In fairness, however, it must be noted that some diseases are seasonal in India. Cholera is most prevalent in the rainy season. Smallpox spreads better in dry weather, that is, from February to May, which is also the time of much travelling for pilgrimage and weddings in India. See Arnold, ‘Smallpox and Colonial Medicine’, pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Fryer, I, 287.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Fryer, III, 94.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ Olearius, p. 338.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Manucci, II, 333.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Mr. DLF in Luillier, p. 213.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Olearius, p. 338.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Fryer, III, 96.Google Scholar

⁸² Abbé Carré, pp. 284–5.Google Scholar

⁸³ Ibid., p. 598.

⁸⁴ Ibid., p. 624. Not, however, that all Europeans were particularly expert. See ibid., pp. 369–70, for the story of a French quack, who did at least examine an ill Portuguese ‘by all the laws of Hippocrates and Galen…’.

⁸⁵ Sarkar, Jadunath, Studies in Aurangzib's Reign, 3rd edn (London, 1989), p. 56.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Fryer, I, 286. I am planning a separate study of the professionalization of medicine in Portuguese Goa.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Ovington, p. 205. David Arnold tells me that in the first half of the nineteenth century bleeding, well on the wane in Europe, was all the rage in India, for it was thought that drastic remedies were needed in such tropical places. Personal communication from Prof. Arnold.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Fryer, III, 95.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Mr. DLF in Luillier, p. 215.Google Scholar