Jayanta Bhattacharya*

MBBS, Ph.D., Independent Scholar, India

*Corresponding Author: Jayanta Bhattacharya, MBBS, Ph.D., Independent Scholar, India.

Received: February 11, 2026 Published: March 31, 2026

Abstract

While discussing travelers’ accounts related to Indian medical knowledge, especially anatomy and surgery, we need to take into account very briefly the salient features of medicine in India. By the time it was predominantly expressed through Āyurveda. In their own models of explanations, Āyurveda and other systems of healing in India like Unani and Siddha deal with organs inside the body and their activities inside the body which can be termed from modern vocabulary as physiological ones. These, taken together led to the origin and causation of diseases, the development and course of diseases inside the body (termed as prognosis) and treatment following these processes. Unlike European medicine, Āyurveda represented Indian subjectivity to a great extent. As keenly observed by Zimmermann, bereft of knowledge of modern and actual anatomy and physiology, ecology formed an integral part of diagnosis of disease without having any idea of organ localization of disease as a result of which, as observed by Zimmermann, a biogeography was absorbed into therapeutics, and a discourse on the world (equivalent to natural history) was contained within a discourse on man (which connotes medicine). In the accounts of travelers and other persons of various interests from other countries, there are abundant descriptions of medical science, as they observed it during the period they in this country, and such impressions, if properly compiled, may provide “unbiased” testimony to the progress of the scientific crafts at the time. Travelers’ accounts are a good source mainly for two reasons – (1) to underscore the trajectory of Indian medical knowledge or Āyurveda across the ages, and (2) to gain some insight related to the decline and marginalization of surgical practice to the sects of the people belonging to the lower castes. It becomes also a moot question how to reconcile the fact of utter lack of anatomical knowledge with surgical excellence in some branches of surgery like rhinoplasty, lithotomy, couching cataract etc. It should be noted that the post-16th century travellers came at a period when post-Vesalian anatomical knowledge and post-Harverian physiology began to be firmly entrenched in European medical education and universities.

Keywords: Travelers’ Accounts; Medicine; Surgery; Indian Knowledge; Epistemology; 17th to 19th Century; Dissection; Medical Education; Calcutta Medical College (CMC)

References

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198. [Emphasis added]
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200. [Emphasis added]
201. [Emphasis added]
203. Ibid, 114. [Emphasis added]
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213. Bacheler, ibid, 175.
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217. Ibid, 178.
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Citation

Citation: Jayanta Bhattacharya. “Glimpses of Indian Medicine through European Travelers’ Accounts, with Special Emphasis on Anatomical and Surgical Knowledge: 17th to 19th Century". Acta Scientific Pharmaceutical Sciences 10.4 (2026): 62-89.

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Copyright: © 2026 Jayanta Bhattacharya. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.