ABSTRACT
In the context of human life and existence, pharmaceutical industry stands synonymous to the beginning of human civilization. The pharmaceutical industry is one of the most vibrant and fastest growing segments of the global economy. Since ancient times, pharmacy is a separate and complimentary health care profession concerned with collection, preparation and standardization and dispensing of drugs. The present monograph tries to explore the nature of interactions between the East and the West in the field of medicine vis-a-vis the development of indigenous pharmaceuticals. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, both the profession of the indigenous practitioners and indigenous medicine gradually lost their glamour with the advent of the colonial medicine and practitioners. In the nineteenth century, the attempt to impose Western medicine in the Indian subcontinent can be viewed in different ways. The Western system of medicine which was actually a tool of colonial hegemony attracted the general mass as well for quick recovery from illness.
