Physicians, Publishing Firms and Indigenous Medicines in Madras Presidency

Abstract

The present study attempts to unravel that why the practitioners of indigenous medicines instituted their own printing presses and book publishing societies and published a large number of medical texts, tracts, pamphlets and journals during the late nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century, though the technology was expensive. For instance, in the Tamil region alone, more than six hundred Tamil medical texts were published during the period apart from medical journals. A major aspect of the period was the contest between indigenous and Western medicines due to the marginalization of indigenous medicines in colonial medical policies and the unprecedented criticism mounted by practitioners of Western medicine. In this process, lithographic print technology played a prominent role. According to Gramsci, print media is one of the vital tools of hegemony which helps to colonize the minds of people. A reverse effect was that the same tool could be used as a counter-hegemonic tool in the political and cultural struggles. On the basis of the Gramsci’s framework, the present work explores that how the practitioners of indigenous medicines used print technology as a ‘tool’ to establish their authority and contest for hegemony against the Western medicine when the colonial government and the practitioners of Western medicine marginalized and delegitimized them in the public sphere.