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Swapnaushadhi: the embedded logic of dreams and medical innovation in Bengal
1Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA, mukharji@sas.upenn.edu.
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
|July 4, 2014
Abstract:
Numerous medicines in South Asia have their origins in dreams. Deities, saints and other supernatural beings frequently appear in dreams to instruct dreamers about specific remedies, therapeutic techniques, modes of care etc. These therapies challenge available models of historicising dreams. Once we overcome these challenges and unearth the embedded logic of these dreams, we begin to discern in them a dynamic institution that enabled and sustained therapeutic change within a 'traditional' medical milieu.