Oceanic voyages, multi-point maritime trade, colonial settlements, and long-distance empires expanded Europe’s economy; introduced it to new ecology, geography and people; and, as time progressed, weakened classical and Biblical authority, making it receptive to new things and ideas. Health-care considerations compelled Europeans in distant lands to learn about plants and plant medicines for reasons of their own survival and for commerce. Medical botany was a colonial necessity. General scientific botany came out of it and went hand in hand with it.

1. Traditional Indian plant medicine:
Western notice and mainstreaming
Rajesh Kochhar
Panjab University Mathematics Department Chandigarh
rkochhar2000@gmail.com
History of Science Meeting Toronto
11-Nov-2017

2. • Oceanic voyages, multi-point maritime trade,
colonial settlements, and long-distance
empires expanded Europe’s economy;
introduced it to new ecology, geography and
people; and, as time progressed, weakened
classical and Biblical authority, making it
receptive to new things and ideas.

3. • Health-care considerations compelled
Europeans to learn about plants and plant
medicines in distant lands for reasons of their
own survival and for commerce. Medical
botany was a colonial necessity.
General scientific botany came out of
it and went hand in hand with it.

4. Pre-Linnaean phase
Pre-Linnaean phase in Indian botany is
represented by two well-known works 100
years apart: The Portuguese physician Garcia
d’Orta’s Colloquies on Drugs and Simples
(1563); and the Dutch administrator Van
Rheede-initiated Hortus Malabaricus (12
volumes, 1678-1693) giving description of
about 742 plants growing in the Western
Ghats.

5. • The Hortus was conceived to meet the
medicinal need of the Dutch in East Indies, but
almost immediately it went far beyond it
• Botanical information in the Hortus came
primarily from the members of the Ezhava
caste of Kerala which ranks low in caste
hierarchy. The working team also included
Brahmins who left to themselves would not
have collaborated or shared work space with
Ezhavas.

6. • The bringing together of diverse segments
of Indian society could take place only
under colonial auspices so that the
information on India that European rulers
collected could not have been collected by
Indians themselves.

7. • The Hortus was profitably consulted by
Linnaeus and later-day botanists. On the basis
of description given in it, in 1811 cardamom
was placed in a new genus, which was named
Elettari after the Malayalam name of the plant
as given in the Hortus itself. Given the
physical and cultural distances involved, later
American and European texts incorrectly
assumed that the name was of the plant-
gathering tribe

8. Linnaean botany
• Linnaean botany was introduced into India by
a direct pupil of Linnaeus, Dr Johann Gerhard
Koenig (1728-1785), who arrived at the
Moravian Mission in Tranquebar in 1768. He
trained Lutheran missionaries as well as
members of Madras medical service in the new
methodology. The missionaries served the
botanical and the colonial cause very well.

9. • Note that at one time there were two distinct,
even theologically antagonistic, missions in
Tranquebar: the Lutheran and the Moravian.
They have often been assumed to be one.

10. • The missionaries collected specimens, wrote
descriptions, and even assigned names, and
regularly sent the material to Germany, where
it was acknowledged, published in research
journals, and incorporated into books.
• Thanks to the Halle connection of the Lutheran
missionaries, earliest reports on Indian
scientific botany were published from
Germany.

11. Missionaries in colonial service
• In 1778, Koenig was appointed Naturalist of
the Madras Presidency. In 1793 the post was
being held by William Roxburgh who had
already established world reputation as a
botanist. That year he was moved to Calcutta
to head the Botanic Garden there. Its
transformation into a scientific botany centre
was a development of great significance for
the world at large.

12. • Indian flora reached Canada also. Sir
Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange the chief
justice of Nova Scotia during 1789-1797
served as the first chief justice of Madras
Supreme Court 1801-1817. In 1802, JP
Rottler and JG Klein presented a collection of
168 plant specimens to Strange which he in
turn passed on to King’s College, Windsor,
Nova Scotia.(Where is it now?)

13. Colonial health-care
• Once the British merchants became rulers, they
needed a health-care system for themselves and
for their Indian soldiers, and in the name of good
governance for Indians in general.
• Most plants and shrubs described in London and
Edinburgh Pharmacopoeias were not to be found
in India.
• The problem became more acute during wars,
when the stock of imported medicines was
depleted.

14. • Many Indian patients who came to European
doctors had previously been treated by local
practitioners with indigenous preparations or
drugs known only by their vernacular name.
• Also, the doctors were called upon to attend to
cases of bites by snakes and other animals.
• For legal and medical reasons the doctor had
to know about available poisons as well as
malicious poisoning of cattle as well as the
antidotes.

15. • The rest of the Western world was also
interested in Indian Materia Medica. Synthesis
of molecules was still into the future. The West
also depended on medicines obtained from
vegetable kingdom. Since India was well-
endowed by nature in this department, it could
be of use to Europe as well. Europe and USA
were thus interested in Indian plants, their
traditional use, and the British physicians’ own
Indian experiences.

16. • For the East India Company,
patronage of natural history was a
powerful public relations tool.
• It financed publication of ‘several splendid
works of botanical illustration’, and ‘liberally
issued’ duplicates of plant specimens to
‘botanists of all nations’ for a reason.

17. • As the Edinburgh Literary Journal wrote in
1831:
• ‘Such powerful exertions in behalf of
science are the proudest boast of a
Company which, maligned as it has been,
will still remain one of the most
stupendous exhibitions of British power’.

18. • The British India medical men scanned Persian,
Sanskrit, Tamil and other texts for information;
interacted with practising Indian physicians and
other knowledgeable persons; frequented shops
selling ‘bazaar drugs’; correlated local names
with the Latin ones; and kept record of their
own findings. Since Persian was the official
language, first British notice of traditional
Indian medicine was from Persian sources.

19. • The first British official to take up translation
from Persian into English was Francis
Goldwyn. In 1780 he published ‘A
Compendious Vocabulary, English and Persia’
which included the oriental simples in the
Materia Medica. Next, in 1782, he undertook
the translation of al-Jaghmini’s Persian
abridgement of Ibn Sina’s Arabic Canon of
Medicine. It was published as Terjuma
canoonché Mahmood Cheghmeny der Elm
Tebb = Short canons of the art of physic : being
a compendium, both of theory and practice.

20. • In 1793, he published Ulfáz Udwiyeh or the
Materia Medica, in the Arabic, Persian, and
Hindevy Languages. The original was the
Persian work by Noureddeen Mohammed
Abdullah al-Shirazi (fl. 1625–40), physician to
the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.

21. • In 1833, George Playfair, a practising physician
of 26 years’ experience translated a Unani
material medica, to which he added notes based
on his own experience. He pointed out that
‘native medicines’, ‘in the hands of the
Physicians of Hindoostan’, produced ‘the
most beneficial effects in many
diseases, for the cure of which our
Pharmacopeia supplied no adequate
remedy’.

22. • Identification of plants was a major challenge.
There were far more plants than Sanskrit and
vernacular names available. These names were
often used loosely and may denote different
things in different geographical areas.

23. Identification of plants was a major challenge.
There were far more plants than Sanskrit and
vernacular names available. These names were
often used loosely and may denote different
things in different geographical areas.
• The first colonial notice of Sanskrit sources was
taken by William Jones in Calcutta in 1795. He
published an alphabetical catalogue of 419
Indian plants giving ‘their Sanskrit and as many
of their Linnaean names as could with any
degree of precision be ascertained’.

24. • The first British India medical publication was
John Fleming’s 1810 A catalogue of Indian
Plants with their Names in Hindustani and
Sunscrit Languages. It was a guide book
intended for European doctors on their first
arrival in India. Many other, more
important, books followed; they were
all very useful because they covered different
geographies and ecologies. Their printing was
facilitated by the government, but the initiative
had been the author’s.

25. • Government’s own initiative came in 1838,
with the appointment of an official committee
to assess the possibility of using indigenous
medicines in the government dispensary. Its
active member was the Medical College
Chemistry Professor and chemical examiner
William O’ Shaughnessy. In 1839 he
brought to the notice of the West the
therapeutic use of cannabis. He
published The Bengal Dispensatory in 1841
and followed it in 1844 with The Bengal
Pharmacopoeia.

26. • Earlier Indians had served only as informants
and assistants. Things changed when Indians
were trained in western medicine and
employed in the medical service though at
lower levels. They now became associates,
collaborators, and independent researchers.
• Preparation for the 1862 International in
London Exhibition imparted great impetus to
systematic investigations into Indian materia
medicas, by Indians>

27. Kanny Lall Dey
• Kanny Lall Dey obtained his diploma from
Calcutta Medical College in 1853 (There were
no degree-awarding universities yet) and was
posted as assistant to chemistry professor and
chemical examiner in the Calcutta Medical
College.(It is not uncommon to see modern
biographies assigning higher designations, like
professor, to Indians which they could not
possibly have been given in the colonial era.)

28. • On instructions from the government, Kanny
Lall Dey sent a consignment of assorted
indigenous drugs (including metallic
preparations) and medicinal oils to London. For
wider circulation, he even brought out from
Calcutta a 14-page pamphlet titled A Brief
Report on Indian Drugs as contributed to the
London Exhibition of 1862. Dey’s collection
was the largest among individuals and was well
received. He won medals for it.

29. • In addition, it brought him professional
recognition in the form of 1863 election as
honorary member of the Pharmaceutical
Society London. In 1867 he contributed ‘a
collection of Native Drugs’ to the Universal
Exhibition at Paris accompanied by a
‘Descriptive Catalogue, which in turn became
the basis of his celebrated work The
Indigenous Drugs of India, published in 1867
from Calcutta.

30. • Kanny Lall was the Empire’s man on
indigenous drugs. He sent collections and
presented them to foreign institutions (including
University of Virginia, in 1870). He was asked
in 1874 to make a collection of Bengal drugs
for the museum at Netley hospital ‘for the
benefit of surgeons joining the Indian Medical
Service’. In 1877 he prepared five complete
sets of the indigenous drugs of India for the five
medical schools of Bengal.

31. • Towards the end of his life, in 1896, he brought
out, with assistance from William Mair, an
enlarged and completely rewritten edition of his
Indigenous Drugs in the hope of its being used
as a textbook. Expectedly, he won suitable
colonial titles and honours ( Rai Bahadur 1872,
CIE 1884).

32. • In South India, a European surgeon in Madras
Army, Edward John Waring, emerged as an
expert on native drugs to the extent that he
came to be appreciated by the Indians also. In
1856, he was appointed Durbar Physician to the
Maharaja of Travancore. In 1860 he published
in English and Tamil Remarks on the uses of
some of the bazaar medicines and common
medical plants of India. The book was
translated into South Indian languages and
remained in use for half a century, with sixth
(revised) edition appearing in 1901.

33. • Those days, when a colonial official came back
home on furlough or forever , he took the
opportunity to network, draw attention to the
significance of his achievements if not already
known, and catch the eye of influential persons.
Waring came to England in 1863 and witnessed
the 1864 publication of the British
Pharmacopoeia (BP) which marked a sharp break
from the past. Immediately he proposed the
bringing out of Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP). The
London Exhibition had already prepared
favourable conditions for reception of Indian
drugs.

34. • The proposal was accepted and a committee
formed by the Secretary of State for India,
with Waring as the editor. The compilation
was carried out in London, and an official
Pharmacopoeia of India (IP)issued in 1868.
• In addition to all the entries in BP, it
included 40 drugs indigenous to
India.

35. • IP could not have been prepared without
contributions from Indian doctors. Kanny Lall
Dey was a major contributor. Two other
prominent names, duly acknowledged, were
Moodeen Sheriff in Madras and , and Udoy
Chand Dutt in Bengal.

36. • While Kanny Lall’s inputs went into the Indian
Pharmacopoeia, Moodeen Sheriff added great
value to IP after it was published. Sheriff, the
‘Native Surgeon of Triplicane Dispensary’ in
Madras painstakingly brought out in 1869 his
Supplement to the Pharmacopoeia of India,
which ran into 700 pages and gave synonyms of
about 400 IP plants and drugs in 15 languages
in their own characters, including Latin,
English, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Burmese,
and Sinhalese.

37. • The work won high praise, with one reviewer
declaring that without it, IP would be ‘a dead
letter’. In 1869 itself he was given the honorary
rank of Surgeon (otherwise reserved for
Europeans) and created a Khan Bahadur in
1878. He retired in 1889 and died two years
later. His Materia Medica of Madras was edited
and posthumously published in 1891 by David
Hooper, government quinologist, Ootacamund.

38. • In 1877 Udoy Chand Dutt [Odoy Chund Dutt]
extracted a Materia Medica from Sanskrit
medical texts. He gave only those details which
arise as ‘a result of observation and experience’,
and omitted those that are ‘the outcome of an
erroneous system of pathology and
therapeutics’. During the heyday of the colonial
empire, Indians were very keen to validate their
traditional knowledge in the Western eyes. (
‘Our ancient knowledge versus your western
science’ is a recent phenomenon.)

39. • IP’s glory lasted less than two decades. There
were many drugs in it whose efficacy
remained unproven. There was no
standardization of names or quality. In addition
adulteration was rampant. The British
pharmaceutical industry was also unhappy
with IP; if the government bought indigenous
drugs in bulk, export of costly British
medicines to India would dwindle.

40. • The third edition of BP which came out in 1885
included all drugs of Indian origin that were
considered to be of proven value. BP was now
declared to be ‘the sole authority on all matters
relating to pharmacy’ and IP banished. In other
words, government of India could buy only
those medicines that carried BP stamp.
• And yet, there were colonial officers
based in India who were supportive of
Indian herbs.

41. • Some years later, in response to pleas made by
its own officer Dr George Watt, Reporter to
Government of India on Economic Products,
and by Kanny Lall, the government declared
that it was willing to buy indigenous drugs
beyond its brief list ‘if they could be
obtained pure, of a stable character, and at a
price not exceeding that at which they can be
imported’. Towards this end, a Central
Indigenous Drug Committee was set up with
Watt as the secretary and with Kanny Lall as
the only Indian member.

42. • Following the Indian Medical Congress held in
Calcutta in 1898, a strong representation was
made by its Council, at the instance of ‘Kanai
Lall Dey, who was then almost on the verge of his
grave’, urging the official recognition of some of
the drugs being made by Indian pharma
companies, and ‘the British Pharmacopoeia
authorities were at last prevailed upon
to find a back seat for some Indian
drugs in the Addendum’, published in 1900.

43. • The achievement was no doubt symbolic but
also had a commercial angle. Once included in
BP, these Indian preparations could be sold to
government depots. As for IP, it would be
revived in 1955, within a decade of the
departure of the British.

44. Natives in colonial service
Indians were placed at the lowest rung of
government service. Except in rarest of rare cases,
no Indian was placed above a European. Indians
were given titles like Rai/Khan Bahadur which
would enhance their prestige in their society, but
would not affect official hierarchy. Many officers
(but not all) wanted their Indian subordinates to
remove shoes before entering the office. Also the
officer would beforehand get all extra chairs
removed so that the subordinate would have to
keep standing.

45. • A universal way of showing Indians their place
was the Anglicization of their names. Dey’s
real name was Kanai Lal Dey which was used
in official and legal records. In his professional
career beginning with the 1862 London
exhibition, both his personal names were
anglicized to Kanny Loll. His reaction came
towards the end of his life when the revised
edition of his Indigenous Drugs appeared.
Kanny had become internationally too well
known to be dispensed with, but now he wrote
Lall in place of Loll.

46. • Sheriff’s first name is spelt as Mohideen in the
Medical College records. Throughout his service
years, it was anglicized to Moodeen. He reverted
to the correct spelling after retiremewnt as can be
seen in his posthumous Materia Medica of
Madras. It should however be appreciated that
two universally respected Indian authorities
Kanny Lall and Moodeen brought out their books
in the 1890s they were assisted by Europeans.

47. Patents derived from traditional
knowledge
• Traditionally, in India, China, and elsewhere,
the oil extracted from the seed of a tree known
as chaulmoogra had been used in cases of
leprosy and other skin diseases. It was tested
by British physicians in India and introduced
into the West, in the 19th century. The tree was
correctly identified in early 20th century and
in 1909 a patent obtained for its ethyl esters
(by Ludwig Taub) for injectible use against
leprosy.

48. Cosmetic dermatology
• The Chaulmoogra oil is no longer in use
against leprosy because of the availability of
synthetic drugs. There is however renewed
interest in external use of chaulmoogra oil and
its derivatives for treatment of pigmentation
problem of the skin and other cosmetic uses, as
can be seen from patents obtained.

49. Back to past
• Many patents obtained by pharma companies
15 or 20 years ago are now expiring.
Development of bio-drugs has not proceeded
on expected lines. There is thus renewed
interest in the West in the traditional health-
care systems of India, Brazil, and other eco-
zones to learn about medicinal uses of plants,
identify their active ingredients, and synthesize
them to produce new patented drugs. In a way,
thus, the past is back with us.

50. •Thank you