ABSTRACT
It has been argued in recent years that under compulsion of maintaining health of the troops, a new 'medical market' was created in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century India, and that it impelled the colonial government to restructure 'indigenous' medical practices. This chapter attempts retelling the story of a little known community of health providers in Bengal. It addresses the socio-cultural trajectory of the bone-setters. It is argued that the actual art or science of bone setting has trickled down the silk route. The bone-setters, as we all know, are traditional orthopaedics specializing in treating broken bones using indigenous medical knowledge, but due to lack of patronage from both the government and the patients, they are marginalized. Bone setting or traditional orthopaedic practice is a crucial domain of local health knowledge. These traditional bone setting measures are practised even today in many centres in south India.
