ABSTRACT
Through a series of vignettes this chapter examines diverse sociocultural factors that shaped Kerala’s medical ethos. It discusses ancient beliefs in the efficacy of chants and rituals to cure, the awareness of a relation between the environment and health and the influence of Buddhist medical knowledge and humane values on local medical practice. It examines the impact of caste and gender on medical practices in Kerala where the profession of physician used to be the hereditary vocation of certain castes. It details the contexts in which tribal, folk and Ayurvedic physicians exchanged medical knowledge between them. The use of the process of cooking food as an analogy to understand the process of digestion and the interconnections between the culinary art and the traditional art of making medicine are discussed in this chapter. The influence of Kalaripayattu, Kerala’s martial art, on the development of physical therapies is outlined here. The chapter examines in detail the idea prevalent in traditional Kerala that Ayurveda, Tantra and Jyotisham (astrology) are complementary healing traditions. It focuses on the traditional system of apprenticeship and transmission, traditional medical literature and the development of Ayurvedic institutions since the colonial period.
