Well-Mannered Medicine: Medical Ethics and Etiquette in Classical Ayurveda.

AuthorSelby, Martha Ann
PositionBook review

Well-Mannered Medicine: Medical Ethics and Etiquette in Classical Ayurveda. By DAGMAR WUJASTYK. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2012. Pp. vi + 238. S38.95.

Dagmar Wujastyk's Well-Mannered Medicine is by no means just about medicine, but about lying, dignity, risk, and death. The Ayurvedic texts that Wujastyk has surveyed also offer "a wider view of human life that includes psychological, social, philosophical, and spiritual perspectives" (p. 2). Her initial sets of questions revolve around whether we can even speak of medical ethics in the Ayurvedic context. What is "etiquette"? And what are the "moral principles" at work that give shape to and underpin the passages that we might categorize as "ethical" in nature?

After laying out her questions, Wujastyk then turns to a famous passage in the Caraka-samhita, known as the "Oath of Caraka." This "oath" is often considered to be the Sanskrit equivalent of the Greek Hippocratic oath. This is then followed by a useful review of the literature on the topic, including a valuable and succinct synopsis of the problems of dating the Sanskrit Ayurvedic corpus (pp. 16-20).

In chapter one Wujastyk discusses the "four pillars" of treatment: physician, medicine, attendant, and patient, noting that there seems to be no discernible "ecological ethic" at work in these texts (p. 26). She then turns to a list of the sorts of specialists included under the heading of "attendant," mostly wet-nurses, kitchen staff, and botanists (p. 27), as well as midwives and friends in the special situation of childbirth, for all of which the texts provide descriptions of appropriate skills, but are silent on their actual training. Throughout this book we encounter elegant, clear, and correct translations of sometimes very complex passages. At first, the book struck me as being perhaps a little too schematic in its design, but the way in which Wujastyk has organized her materials actually works very well. She opens each section with translated passages, and then provides context for them, giving information about where they occur in the texts, and she then raises questions about connections and meanings, then compares her materials across the texts in question.

This chapter provides us with an excellent sense of the "formalities" of early Ayurvedic practice. There are thorough discussions across texts of the different categories of doctor, ranging from "the good physician who deserves the title vaidya" to "the fraud/quack" (p. 43). There is very interesting information here on comportment, cleanliness, and sartorial habit, an ethics expressed in etiquette, as it were.

The patient is everywhere and nowhere in these texts. As Wujastyk states, "the medical treatises offer no...

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