Contributors: David Arnold, Dominik Wujastyk, Francis Zimmermann, Kenneth G Zysk, Waltraud Ernst, Geraldine Forbes, Christiane Hartnack, Rahul Peter Das, Projit Behari Mukharji, Amit Ranjan Basu, Chittabrata Palit and Jayanta Bhattacharya.
Publisher: Ababhas, Kolkata.
Date and year of publication: March 2009.
The book has been divided into two parts: (1) the first section deals with medicine and art of healing in ancient India, especially in Ayurveda, (2) the second section section how disease, body, mind/psychology-psychiatry, gender question, public health etc. was dealth with during colonial encounter, and, finally, (3) how the entire notion of social body, methodology of treatment, prognosis and healing was epistemologically reconstituted into individuated body (also, person of the patient was transformed into pathology inside the body) following colonial confrontation. All the articles are research papaers produced after a long period of study. This book also addresses questions like - (1) how scientificity, post-Renaissance rationalism and positivist/utilitarian idea of prgress and develpoed was faught within British medicine too, (2) how the question of the body and its internal anatomy became the cornerstone over which the victorious edifice modern Hospital medicine was erected, (3) how on the one hand Ayurveda and, on the other, pre-Hospital medicine British practice and Hospital medicine based modern medical practices confronted vis-a-vis and overdetermined one another.