From Yorubaland to Punjab: Culture, Reconstruction in Indigenous Medical Systems and Imperial Medicine, 1900-1928

Abstract

From the colonial era, settlers ‘technologies including imperial medicine have shaped the social, cultural and economic landscape of the colonies in diverse dimensions.  In the post-modern world, global medicine still has the trappings of health inequities and imperialism, particularly in lower- and middle-income countries and the Global South. In this regard, this research article examines how Yoruba medicine practitioners deployed their cultural sanctity to withstand the domineering influence of imperial medicine in the early twentieth-century. In the same era, we compare this phenomenon with how Hakims and Vaids in colonial Punjab deployed Urdu literati to reconstruct their social relevance. Thus, we argue that Yoruba medicine was a site of cultural reformation while Punjab medicine was a site of social reconstruction. This historical research engaged archival sources and suitable secondary data, and exposed varied reactions of Indigenous medical practitioners to colonial medical institutions in the early 20^th century. A study of this caliber highlights the inextricable interface between culture, medicine, and technology in the context of colonialism. It reinforces the significance of acculturation in cultural encounters to forestall cultural emasculation.