Health and Medicine in the Hindu Tradition: Continuity and Cohesion (HEALTH/MEDICINE AND THE FAITH TRADITIONS)

Health and Medicine in the Hindu Tradition: Continuity and Cohesion (HEALTH/MEDICINE AND THE FAITH TRADITIONS) by Desai, Prakash N.. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780824509149.

This work analyzes the religious and philosophical underpinnings of the traditions of medicine and the health ideals of Hindus, taking account of their historical and developmental moorings. Hindu concepts of the self and the body are explored to locate the themes of illness, wellness, sexuality, and relationships, on the one hand, and the traditions of curing, on the other. Ayurveda, the principal Hindu medical tradition, is examined from both classical and textual as well as folk and experiential perspectives. Unlike other volumes in the Health/Medicine and the Faith Traditions series, which have been written by ethicists, church historians, and theologians, this one is the work of a psychiatrist born in India and long resident in the West who deals quite candidly and personally with the tensions in his own life between traditional ways and modern medicine and the difficulties of adherence to Hindu beliefs and values while living in a non-Hindu culture.