In Unani Medicine in the Making, Kira Schmidt Stiedenroth examines the contemporary institutions and practices of Graeco-Islamic healing in India. Drawing on interviews with practitioners, clinical observations, and Urdu sources, the book focuses on Unani's multiplicity, scrutinizing apparent tensions between the understanding of Unani as a system of medicine and its multiple enactments as Islamic medicine, medical science, or alternative medicine. Ethnographic details provide vivid descriptions of the current practices of Unani in India and invite readers to rethink the idea that humoral medicine is incommensurable with modern science. Ultimately, the book also discusses the relationship of Unani with Muslim communities, examining the growing practice of Prophetic Medicine in Urban India and the increasing representation of Unani as Islamic Medicine.
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Multiplicity, Practice Ontology, and Looping Effects
- Unani and Traditional Medicine in South Asia
- The Biomedicalization of Traditional Medicines
- Theory vs. Practice?
- From the Topic to Fieldwork
- Conducting Fieldwork
- Sources and Methods
- 1. A System of Medicine?
- Official Representations of Unani Medicine
- Government Institutions and Official Publications
- The Prescription of Drugs
- The National Formulary of Unani Medicine and the Unani Pharmacopoeia of India
- Unani Practitioners
- Doctors or Hakims?
- The Old Ḵẖandānī Hakim as Embodiment of Unani Knowledge
- The Cult of Eminent Hakims
- The Unani Fraternity
- Textual Sources of Authority
- Systematization and Looping Effects
- The Systematization of (Unani) Medicine: Historical Overview
- Enactments and Loopings
- 2. Authority, Originality, and the Limits of Standardization
- Creation and Transmission of Medical Knowledge
- Becoming a Hakim
- Institutionalized Training and its Shortcomings
- Family Lineages and Secret Knowledge
- Degrees and (Un-)Official Practice
- The Regulation of Practice
- Qualified and Registered Practitioners
- BUMS as Second Choice
- Practicing ‘Allopathy’ with a Unani Degree
- Defying Standards
- Individualized Treatments and Clinical Falsification
- Pulse Diagnosis and the Limits of Standardization
- Exclusive Knowledge and the Pursuit of Originality
- Standardized Drugs
- Variations of Medicine and Multiplicity
- 3. Beyond Humouralism
- Fundamental Principles of Unani Medicine
- The Concept of Medicine and the Principles of Human Physiology
- ‘What is First’
- Diseases
- Treatments and Prevention
- Finding the Root Cause of Disease
- Observation and Questioning
- Pulse Examination
- ‘It is Written in the Books that Urine Speaks to the Hakims’
- Therapeutic Practices
- Food and Health
- Lifestyle and Regimen
- Unani Medicines
- Humoralism and Looping Effects
- 4. The Appropriation of Modern Scientific Advances and Concepts
- A Case of Biomedicalization?
- Using Modern Diagnostic Methods
- Diagnostic Aids
- Proof of Effectiveness
- Biomedical Technologies?
- Modernizing Concepts
- On Matter and Qualities
- Combining Unani and Biomedical Knowledge
- 5. Science and the Quest for Acceptance and Recognition
- Science as Means for Recognition
- The Beginnings of Modern Scientific Research on Unani
- The Government’s Agenda for Unani Research and Global Health Policy
- A ‘New Unani’: The Unani Pharmaceutical Industry and the Global CAM Market
- Validating Unani through Modern Science
- Clinical Trials
- ‘The Method Has Changed but Not the Principles’
- Is Translation Possible?
- 6. Unani Medicine and Muslims in India
- Unani Medicine and Muslim Culture
- Historical Background
- Unani, Muslims, and Urdu
- Medical Communalism
- Islamic Medicine?
- Unani and T̤ibb-i Nabavī
- Unani Medicine and Islam
- Secular or Islamic? Unani and Prophetic Medicine
- Ḥijāmah in the Context of Unani
- The Revival of Prophetic Medicine in the Context of Unani
- Summary and Reflexions for Future Engagement
- Bibliography
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