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.
New Look to Phytomedicine: Advancements in Herbal Products as Novel Drug Leads is a compilation of in-depth information on the phytopharmaceuticals used in modern medicine for the cure and management of difficult-to-treat and challenging diseases. Readers will find cutting-edge knowledge on the use of plant products with scientific validation, along with updates on advanced herbal medicine in pharmacokinetics and drug delivery. This authoritative book is a comprehensive collection of research based, scientific validations of bioactivities of plant products, such as anti-infective, anti-diabetic, anti-cancer, immune-modulatory and metabolic disorders presented by experts from across the globe. Step-by-step information is presented on chemistry, bioactivity and the functional aspects of biologically active compounds. In addition, the pharmacognosy of plant products with mechanistic descriptions of their actions, including pathogenicity is updated with information on the use of nanotechnology and molecular tools in relation to herbal drug research. - Compiles up-to-date information on the chemotherapeutics used in the treatment of infective and metabolic disorders - Presents advancements in the discovery of new drugs from plants using molecular and nanotechnology tools - Examines detailed information on the use of herbals agents in cancer, HIV and other ailments, including diabetes, malaria and neurological disorders
Examining the world of popular healing in South Asia, this book looks at the way that it is marginalised by the state and medical establishment while at the same time being very important in the everyday lives of the poor. It describes and analyses a world of ‘subaltern therapeutics’ that both interacts with and resists state-sanctioned and elite forms of medical practice. The relationship is seen as both a historical as well as ongoing one. Focusing on those who exist and practice in the shadow of statist medicine, the book discusses the many ways in which they try to heal a range of maladies, and how they experience their marginality. The contributors also provide a history of such therapeutics, in the process challenging the widespread belief that such ‘traditional’ therapeutics are relatively static and unchanging. In focusing on these problems of transition, they open up one of the central concerns of subaltern historiography. This is an important contribution to the history of medicine and society, and subaltern and South Asian studies.
This superbly illustrated A-Z guide to modern and traditional Indian herbal remedies brings together information from numerous authoritative sources in the form of a highly structured and well-written reference work. Entries for each medicinal plant describe classical Ayurvedic and Unani uses, compare modern findings and applications, together with their pharmacology and therapeutic principles in an evidence-based approach. Information sources include: German Commission E, US Pharmacopoeia/National Formulary, and the WHO. The resulting work highlights the potential of Indian herbs for Western medicine by placing findings on a scientific platform. Over 200 full-colour photographs and 50 drawings illustrate the plants. Includes ayurvedic herbal drugs More than 150 general and more than 500 plant species are covered Easy-to-use and highly structured entries Detailed information on traditional use and modern evidence-based medical application
A useful book on the Graeco-Arab medical system of 'Unani' based on the balance of the humours in the body. Also has an informative chapter on home remedies.
Nature has blessed India with a vast variety of herbal and medicinal plants and shrubs that grows in different climatic regions from the frozen Himalayas in the north to the tropical forests in the south. From times this immemorial rich beauty has been used in preparing herbal medicine to cure various disease and to promote a great repository of this knowledge, organized in the from of unani and ayurvedic herbal systems of medicine.The system has a mass following and word wide acceptability.UNANI was derived from the word IONIAN which indicates it origin to Greece TIBB means medicine. Unani system of medicine is a synthesis of Greek and Arabs system. Unani physicians were the first to classify the disease on the basis of different anatomical and physiological symptoms of the body. Hippocrate (460-377BC) who firstly postulated the concept of disease is due to the imbalance of humors and hence emphasized on natural knowledge and hence freed Medicine from the realm of superstition and magic, and gave it the status of science. Arab physicians introduced unani pathy in India which took firms root in the soil soon. Unani pathy had its days in India during 13th and 17th century's .soon it spread all over the country and remained popular among the masses, even after the downfall of Mughal Empire. It got a set back during British rule but still remained in practice as it enjoyed the faith of masses. The unani pathy survived during British rule due to the efforts of the sharifi family in delhi.the Azizi family of Lucknow and the Nizams of Hyderabad. Hakim ajmal khan (1868-1927) from sharifi family was an outstanding physicians and scholar of unani medicine kept the tempo high. Unani medicine, as is well known, based on the Hippocratic humoral theory. This theory supposes the presence of four humuors in the body viz: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. The mizaj of individuals are expressed by word damawi (sanguine), balghami (phlegmatic), safrawi (choleric) and saudawi (melancholic) according to the dominancy of the humour. Every person is supposed to have a unique humoral constitution which represents his healthy state and any change in this state causes illness of the said person. The severity of the disease depends directly upon the change in equilibrium from mizaj. There are three major quwa (faculties) which regulate human body viz. Quwwate nafsania (psychic faculties), Quwwate haivania (vital faculties) and Quwwate tabiyya (physical faculties). These quwa (faculties) are specific for a particular tissue or organ on which the specific functions of that organ depend. Quwwate tabiyya is concerned with taghzia (nutrition), namu (growth) and tawleed (reproduction) and jigar is considered uzwe raees (epicenter) of this quwwat. Quwwate haivaniya is concerned with tadbeer of rooh, which brings life to the part it supplies. Qalb is uzwe raees of this faculty. Quwwat nafsania is concerned with intellect, sensory and motor functions and dimagh (brain) is supposed to be seat of this faculty.
