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SUMMARY:CERES Research Colloquium
DTSTART:20241028T151500Z
DTEND:20241028T164500Z
DTSTAMP:20260416T212233Z
UID:ceres-research-colloquium_24-10-28-11530@ceres.rub.de
CATEGORIES:
DESCRIPTION:Leo Weiß\n\n"Surgical Instruments of Indian “oculists” in
  the late 19th and early 20th Century"\n\nThe Karl Sudhoff Institute for t
 he History of Medicine in Leipzig houses a collection of Indian surgical i
 nstruments donated by the Indologist A.F. Rudolf Hoernle between 1907 and 
 1913. The subject of this talk is a part of this collection that supposedl
 y belonged to “two practicing Indian oculists from Benares” and their 
 provenance. Unfortunately\, there are no textual sources written by these 
 oculists\, who\, according to the colonial discourse about them\, were lar
 gely illiterate. The primary textual sources on these subaltern health pra
 ctitioners are publications by Indian Medical Service doctors\, who primar
 ily viewed them as both unwanted competition as well as a public health ha
 zard. According to these sources\, they were commonly called suttiah or va
 idya and were hereditary practitioners who almost exclusively practiced th
 e couching of catharact.\nWhile there are no written sources on these ocul
 ists their instruments have been collected both at the KSI as well as in v
 arious UK collections. I will therefore attempt to develop a closer unders
 tanding of the social position these so-called ‘oculists’ occupied by 
 closely examining the material sources available. What becomes apparent is
  that the collected instruments contain not only those that were used for 
 couching but also those used for other medical procedures unrelated to opt
 halmics. Furthermore\, a significant number of instruments are quite evide
 ntly of Western manufacture\, hinting at a complex entanglement between co
 lonial and indigenous healing practices.
LOCATION:CERES Palais\, room "Ruhrpott" (4.13)
URL:https://ceres.rub.de/en/events/ceres-research-colloquium_24-10-28/
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