ABSTRACT
Charles Leslie’s now classic Asian Medical Systems (1976) came to mind during the early days of my fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Indonesia (1991-1993). Leslie’s research on Asian medical systems drew attention to the ways in which modernizing movements resulted in a search for supposedly lost authentic traditions, revealed in the spirit and practice of medical revivalisms. At the same time, he observed the place of “medical revivalism,” particularly in China and India, as “an aspect of cultural nationalism in these societies” (Leslie 1976: 319, 1977). Like Leslie, I noted both trends in Indonesia as I set out to study how diverse local medical practices were characterized by both the population and the state.
