kalaaya (was: question)

[Dominik Wujastyk]

On Fri, 14 Mar 1997, Mr B.Philip.Jonsson [Seeker of Useless Knowledge] wrote:
> Most interesting? Was cerebral palsy known/and or described in Indic
> medicine? (I take for granted there were some of us everywhere at all
> times, but did the physicians recognize the diagnosis? After all it wasn't
> until a hundred years ago in the west.)

Well, Su"sruta's Nidaanasthaana 1 describes a range of "wind" diseases
some of which may well have been coincident with what we call cerebral
palsy today.  The trouble is that the aetiological categories,
terminology, and explanatory models are so different from contemporary
bio-medical discourse that it is often not possible to equate syndromes or
nosological entities with modern categories. 

All the best,
Dominik

--
Dominik Wujastyk               Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk          183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, England
<URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/>                    FAX: 44 171 611 8545