Hot and cold as an explanatory model: The example of Bharuch district in Gujarat, India

Sm. Sci. Med. Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 389-399, Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved

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AND COLD AS AN EXPLANATORY MODEL: THE EXAMPLE OF BHARUCH DISTRICT IN GUJARAT, INDIA ROBERT POOL

Derde Abstract-The classification classification

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concepts of hot and cold are important in disease etiologies and systems of food in many parts of the world. A number of writers on hot-cold beliefs have assumed that the of foods is the central element in this system of beliefs, and that it is consistent. They have

then proceeded to explain these beliefs in symbolic or adaptive terms, generalizing from systems of classification which have only local applicability. More recently a number of writers have recognized the importance of intracultural variation in the hot-cold classification of foods, and have turned their attention to revealing the underlying principles of classification. But because food classifications are only consistent within a limited geographical area, if they are consistent at all, these ‘general principles’ are only applicable to a single area or limited cultural context. In this article I describe the hot-cold system in a rural area of the Indian state of Gujarat. I show that by proceeding from the classification of diseases, and not from the classification of foods, it becomes possible to reveal certain underlying classificatory principles which also appear to be applicable to other manifestations of the hot-cold system. These principles seem to be based on the phenomena which accompany temperature changes in nature. Finally I suggest that hot-cold beliefs should be seen as an explanatory model which seeks to make the puzzling and threatening phenomena of disease and death more acceptable and predictable. Key words-hot-cold

beliefs, food ideology,

food avoidances,

INTRODUCTION

THE RESEARCH

SEITING

The eastern part of Bharuch district where the research was carried out is situated in the southern part of Gujarat state. Although Gujarat is the second richest state in India, eastern Bharuch is an underdeveloped area. There is a lack of facilities, few industries, high infant mortality and morbidity, high illiteracy and 90% of the population is rural. Ecological conditions are unfavorable as the soil is infertile, rainfall is insufficient and irrigation almost non-existent. Eastern Bharuch is classified as a tribal area by the Indian Government. Tribal areas are those areas where more than 50% of the population belongs to the scheduled tribes. Membership of the scheduled tribes is largely a matter of definition by the government. In eastern Bharuch 74% of the population belongs to the scheduled tribes. In India tribal areas and underdeveloped areas tend to coincide and the tribal groups, together with the untouchable castes, form the bottom rung of the caste status ladder. The research was carried out mainly among the poor tribal population in number of villages between December 1982 and April 1983. Altogether 60 people were interviewed, men and women being equally represented. The interviews were unstructured and 389

XI&E

India

classification and not that of disease classification as their point of departure, have tended to overlook the importance of these characteristics. Finally I suggest that hot-cold beliefs should be seen as an explanatory model in the sense in which this concept has been used by Robin Horton.

In many parts of the world the concepts of hot and cold play a central role in disease etiologies. In these systems ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ do not usually refer to actual temperature states but to abstract qualities. Foods, bodily states and diseases are classified as being hot or cold and diseases are thought to be caused by excess heat or cold in the body. These beliefs have been widely reported in Latin America [l-12], India [ 13-261, various southeast Asian countries [27-291 and Morocco [30]. Most articles on the hot-cold system have been mainly descriptive accounts of hot-cold beliefs in a particular culture. There have, however, been a number of attempts at analysis. These include attempts to expose the underlying principles of classification in a particular cultural context [l, 21; to show that the different versions of the system have so many characteristics in common because they have all diffused from one or two main sources [S, 281; or that, in spite of the similarities, the system has developed independently in a number of areas [7,8]. More recently a number of authors have stressed intracultural variations in hotxold classifications [lo, 111. In this article I describe hot-cold beliefs as they appear in the etiological thinking of a section of the tribal population in eastern Bharuch district in the Indian state of Gujarat. I suggest that the underlying principles of the system of disease classification in Bharuch are based on phenomena such as freezing, congestion, melting and explosion, which accompany temperature changes in nature. These characteristics will also be shown to underly hot-cold classifications in other areas. I argue that a number of previous writers, because they have taken the system of food s.s M

pregnancy,

ROBERT POOL

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in-depth and sometimes lasted for more than two hours. Most of my informants were Bhils. The Bhils constitute 75% of the total tribal population in Baruch. A number of Tadavis were also interviewed. The Tadavis constitute the second largest tribal group. Tribal goups such as these are generally referred to as castes in Bharuch, and they are further subdivided into a number of sub-castes. Christianity and sanskritization-the immitation of high caste behavior and rituals by the lower castes-play an important role in this process of caste formation. There seems to be a correlation between sanskritization and the extent of hot-cold beliefs, though the differences appear to be quantitative and not qualitative, the more sanskritized knowing more about the theory and being able to classify more foods. I do not, however, have sufficient data to generalize about this. There did not appear to be any major differences in hot-cold beliefs between the more knowledgable tribals and the few high-caste Hindus whom I interviewed (three Brahmins, two Patels and one Koli). Education also seemed to influence the extent of knowledge about hot and cold: the more educated knew more than the less educated. However. above a certain level education seems to lead to a rejection of hot-cold beliefs as ‘unscientific’. This is especially the case with young, educated, urban oriented individuals [48]. HOT-COLD

CLASSIFICATIONS

IN BHARUCH

Hot and cold foods

The words ‘hot’ (garam) and ‘cold’ (thandu) when used in connection with food may refer to a number of qualities which are usually not related. Firstly ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ may refer to temperature. Secondly, they may refer to pungency, highly spiced foods being considered hot. Thirdly, they may refer to abstract qualities which usually bear no relation to either pungency or temperature. For example papayas are hot and bananas are cold in this sense. Most of the commonly available foods were classified by my informants as being either hot or cold in this latter sense [31], and most agreed in their classification of the following items. Hot foods

Cold foods

Sesame Papaya Brinjal Dried fish Onion Garlic Chillies Badjri Jaggery Alcohol Most pulses Dates Fenugreek Eggs Meat Spices

Curd Buttermilk All bananas Groundnuts All leftovers Jowar Rice Sugar Milk Wheat Most fruits Most vegetables

The hot+old value of meat varies, depending on the sort, though when people speak of meat in general

they refer to it as being hot. Buffalo meat is seen as relatively cool. Chicken is thought to be very hot. Goat meat is not as hot as chicken but hotter than buffalo. Pigeon, which is taboo and which the tribal people seem to eat for medicinal purpose, though they do not like to admit it, is extremely hot. Most vegetables and fruits were seen as being cool or neutral, except those listed as hot or cold above. Spices in general (masalas) were also referred to as being hot. Most of my informants thought that wheat was cold, though a significant number thought that it was neutral. One informant thought that wheat was hot. It is worth noting that my informants tended only to know the properties of the foods which they themselves frequently used. Brahmins and other vegetarian informants could not classify meat (or perhaps they were unwilling to think about it). And in two villages where no badjri or jowar was grown the people could not say whether these were hot or cold. The first ten items in the list of hot foods and the first eight in the list of cold foods were classified in this way by all my respondents except three who only knew that bananas were cold and alcohol hot and the four respondents mentioned above who did know about badjri and jowar, and three informants in the two Tadavi villages. Most of the foods listed above do not appear to have intrinsic properties which associate them with temperature states. Also, the foods in the hot and cold categories do not seem to possess any common characteristics such as color, texture, form, etc. Why, for example, are most fruits and vegetables cold, bananas extremely cold and papayas extremely hot? And why the difference between jowar and badjri? Or between sugar and jaggery? And why are some types of meat hotter than others? If the qualities of hot and cold are not based on the intrinsic properties of foods, how then do people know whether a particular food is hot or cold? The answer is that they deduce the quality of the food from the effect which it is thought to have on the person who eats it. For example, they know that brinjal is hot because if a person eats too much of it he/she will get a skin disease (which is hot); and they know that bananas are cold because too many bananas cause coughs and colds (which are cold diseases). Knowledge of the hot&cold qualities of foods seems to be derived from the diseases which are thought to result from eating too much of the food in question. Bodily constitutions

Bodily constitutions (prakruti) are also seen in terms of hot and cold. A person with a hot constitution is thought to be more prone to hot diseases than a person with a cold constitution and vice versa. A person with a cold constitution may eat as much hot food as he/she likes without contracting a hot disease, and a person with a hot constitution is less likely to get a cold disease from eating cold food. As was the case with hot and cold food, there is no direct way of ascertaining whether a particular person has a hot or cold constitution. This can only be discovered empirically after years of experience have shown to which diseases a person is prone. For

Hot and cold as an explanatory model

example, if parents notice that on a number of occasions after the family has eaten hot food one of their children comes out in rash (a hot disease) while the others do not, and if this appears to occur more frequently in the summer, then they will conclude that the child has a hot constitution. Or, to give another example, if a woman has had three or four spontaneous abortions (caused by too much heat) then her relatives will consider this to be proof that she has a hot constitution and they will make sure that she avoids hot food in subsequent pregnancies. Thus hot constitution appears to mean the same as prone to hot diseases and cold constitution as prone to cold diseases. In connection with bodily constitutions respondents made no mention of the vayu and pitham constitutions [32] which have been reported in other parts of India [26]. Constitution is also seen as being related to personality traits. For example, people with a hot constitution are more likely to be hot tempered whereas those with a cold constitution are more likely to be mild. In addition to this, diet, in conjunction with constitution, can influence temperament. In this way informants explained why people who drink excessively are bad tempered and aggressive. Alcohol is hot and if large amounts are consumed by a person who already has a hot constitution then the amount of heat in that person’s body will become so great that he/she will become angry and aggressive. Most meats were considered to be hot by my respondents and they explained India’s defeat in the cricket tests against Pakistan by the fact that the Pakistani cricketers were more aggressive because of their meat diets. Other sources of heat and cold Heat and cold can also be derived from other sources such as hard physical labor and sexual intercourse. Pregnant women are advised to refrain from heavy work as the resulting build-up of heat may lead to an abortion. A number of women complained that because they were poor and forced to work hard they were much more prone to abortions than the high caste women. Sex is generally considered to be hot or heat producing in Hindu culture, and I was told by one respondent that if a mother who was in a sexually excited state were to breast feed her infant then it would become ill because of the extreme heat of the milk [33]. In addition, environmental conditions also produce heat and cold in the conventional sense of temperature. These temperature states tend to combine with the abstract qualities of heat and cold and influence people’s health. Thus exposure to the hot sun may cause hot disease, especially if the person concerned has a hot constitution or has been eating hot food. In the winter people are more prone to cold diseases and will therefore try to avoid cold foods. Diseases The ascription of hot and cold qualities to foods and bodily constitutions appears to be derived from the diseases which excesses of these qualities cause. Also, it is in the sphere of diseases that the heat or cold which is generated in other spheres appears to

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combine and manifest itself. Thus temperature heat from the environment, constitutional heat and heat from food all combine to produce hot diseases; and environmental cold, constitutional cold and cold from food combine to produce cold diseases. It seems hardly surprising that disease and not food is central in this system of classification. Disease is a direct threat to life and a cause of much anxiety which needs to be explained and rationalized. Indeed, the whole system of hot-cold beliefs appears to be primarily an attempt to explain disease and the classification of foods seems to be secondary to this. Although hot and cold are not the only recognized etiological factors (heredity, contagion, germs, water and evil spirits are all seen as causing disease) they are the most important and the most consistent. Respondents saw heat and cold as playing a central role in most common diseases. Hot diseases

Cold diseases

Scabies

Colds Coughs Asthma Breathlessness Tuberculosis Respiratory ailments Paralysis Joint pains Rheumatism Ear infection

Boils Ulcers Measles Smallpox Chickenpox Leprosy Skin diseases Raliva Diarrhea Hyperacidity Urinary infection Piles Eye infection

Neutral diseases or no agreement Suwarog Jaundice Typhoid Malaria in general

Of the diseases listed above the first ten hot diseases and the first eight cold diseases were classified in this way by 48 informants. The remaining twelve informants did not give a contradictory classification of these diseases. They either did not know the disease in question or did not have an opinion as to its quality. Thirty informants thought that Suwarog was a neutral disease. Only three respondents mentioned piles, and one of these referred to piles as both a hot and a cold disease during the course of the same interview [34]. Rativa is a disease which is widely recognized by villagers but not by local allopathic doctors. Rativa is a hot condition which is seen as afflicting only women with a hot constitution, and it can be exacerbated by the consumption of hot food. Rativa is limited to the period of pregnancy, delivery and the first few months after delivery. The symptoms are: frequent miscarriages; still-birth, with the still-born infant turning black shortly after delivery, “burnt black by the heat” as one informant put it; rashes, red spots or blotches on the skin of the newly born infant. Women with a record of miscarriages or still-births are referred to as having a rativa constitution [36]. Skin diseases are common and include scabies, boils, and ulcers. Many respondents also include measles, smallpox and chickenpox in the category of skin diseases. All skin diseases are considered to be hot, i.e. they are thought to be caused by too much heat in the body. The sources of this heat vary, however, according to the disease concerned. Scabies,

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ROBERT POOL

boils and ulcers are seen as being caused primarily by too much hot food, though scabies was sometimes attributed to lack of hygiene or ‘unclean blood’. Measles, chickenpox and smallpox were often classified as types of skin disease, and therefore as hot. Most respondents also thought that they were seasonal ailments, being more common in the summer. Supernatural causes were seen as playing an important role in the genesis of these diseases----as in other parts of India but they could be exacerbated by environmental heat or hot food. Diarrhea is another important disease. It is widespread and is thought to be caused by too much hot food. Respondents did not distinguish between the different types of diarrhea as recognized by biomedicine, but classified all manifestations of loose stools as diarrhea. Leprosy is also thought to be caused by too much hot food, the main culprit being dried fish, an extremely hot food [37]. Vitiligo, which is quite common in India, is referred to as “white leprosy” and is thought to be the first stage of leprosy proper. There were, however, a number of respondents who claimed that leprosy was a “family disease”, i.e. inherited, while a few others thought that it was spread by contagion, i.e. by touching someone who has the disease. As far as cold disease are concerned, respiratory diseases are by far the most important. By respiratory diseases I mean diseases which manifest themselves primarily or exclusively as an impediment to respiration. These include coughs, colds, asthma, broncopneumonia, breathlessness, etc. These are all diseases which are seen as being caused by too much cold in the body. They are described by respondents as diseases which are common in the cold season, and there is therefore a correlation between these diseases and excess environmental cold. Some are also correlated with the intake of excessive cold food. For example bananas are seen as a notorious cause of coughs and colds. T.B., which is also a respiratory disease in the above sense, is also classified as cold. But, surprisingly most respondents gave excessive smoking and drinking as the most important cause. T.B. was not usually connected with either weather or food. This is strange, because alcohol is thought to be hot. Another important group of cold diseases includes rheumatism, joint pains, muscle pains, etc. As was the case with the respiratory diseases, these rheumatic diseases are primarily correlated with environmental cold. I was told that these diseases were common during the cold season and on cold days. Some respondents did claim, however, that cold food may play a role, especially if the person concerned has a cold constitution. As I have mentioned, heat and cold are not the only factors which are seen as causing diseases, and not all diseases are classified as being hot or cold. Common diseases which fall outside the hot-cold syndrome include malaria, jaundice, worm infestations and suwarog. Most of my respondents said that malaria had nothing to do with heat or cold and that it was caused by mosquitoes. There were, however, a few respondents who thought that it was hot because of the

fever, while a few others thought that it was cold because of the chills. Jaundice is also generally thought to be a neutral disease, though here again there were a number of respondents who thought that it was cold. This is probably because of the widespread belief that jaundice is caused by eating too many bananas (which are cold). It is possible that the connection between bananas and jaundice is a result of analogous reasoning: the color of the bananas being associated with the symptoms of the disease. Worm infestations are also seen as being neutral. Some respondents thought that they were caused by too much sweet food. This was the reason given by some respondents for not giving their children sweet foods. Finally .suwurog which, like rutizw, is an indigenous disease concept, is also neutral. Like ratiaa, suwarog is a woman’s disease which is connected with pregnancy and delivery. It occurs after the delivery and the symptoms include weakness, tiredness. fever, swelling, puffiness. purulent vaginal discharge, pale skin and watery blood. None of my respondents were sure of the exact cause of sunarog, though most agreed that it had nothing to do with heat or cold. The cause which was mentioned most often was that the woman had eaten sour food-such as curd or buttermilk-too soon after delivery 1381. There are also a number of diseases which are not important in local medical thinking but which are important from a bio-medical perspective. These include protein-energy malnutrition (PEM), iron deficiency anemia and night blindness. Though most lower caste children are malnourished (PEM), this was not recognized as being a disease by respondents. Severe cases of marasmus were recognized and explained as being cases of infant T.B., perhaps a result of excessive drinking by parents. However. most PEM is manifested as short stature and low weight and experienced as normal. Iron deficiency anemia is common throughout India. I was told by the doctors at a health center in one village that 90% of the women in their area suffered from anemia. Anemia, like PEM. is not recognized by the people as being a disease. Women would admit that they always felt tired and weak but they thought that this was a normal consequence of the hard physical labor which they performed. Night blindness, caused by vitamin A deficiency, is also common, but was hardly mentioned to me by respondents. Those who did mention it were the more educated individuals who also knew that it was caused by vitamin deficiency.

Pregnancy and menstruation are considered to be hot states, i.e. periods in which the person concerned is particularly hot, vulnerable to hot food, weather, etc., and particularly prone to hot diseases. The case of pregnancy is interesting because it is not simply a question of avoiding excess heat during the whole pregnancy but adjusting the amount of heat to different levels during the various stages of the pregnancy. In this process of adjustment different factors have to be taken into account: the sources of heat (the pregnancy itself, bodily constitution, diet. weather,

Hot and cold as an explanatory model etc.) and the dangers inherent in pregnancy (abortion, difficult delivery, still-birth, illness in the infant, etc.). Thus, in the early pregnancy, excess heat can lead to spontaneous abortion or to ratiua. This means the pregnant woman, who is already in a heated state, must try to avoid all sources of heat during the first trimester. This is particularly important for women with a hot constitution. During the third trimester the main fear is of a difficult delivery. The main cause of difficult deliveries is that “the woman is unable to generate enough heat to expel the infant”. So whereas heat is dangerous in the early pregnancy it is actually required during the delivery. This means that the recommendations for the first trimester are reversed during the third trimester. During the third trimester women are advised to eat hot food in order to build up the heat necessary for delivery. This is especially important for women with a cold constitution because they are prone to difficult deliveries. Women with a hot constitution need not necessarily eat extra hot food as they generally have sufficient bodily heat to ensure an easy delivery. Some respondents said that cold food caused a sticky white layer of ‘fat’ to form around the fetus causing it to get stuck in the womb. Hot food during the third trimester was then seen as necessary to melt this layer, thus facilitating delivery. Thus heat is seen as leading to the expulsion of the fetus and cold as causing it to stick in the womb. This chain of thought is continued in the immediate post-partum period. After the delivery hot food should be eaten to stimulate the expulsion of all the ‘dirt’ still in the womb. However, if post-partum bleeding is excessive, the amount of hot food will be reduced and colder food will be eaten. Hot food is also said to give the women the strength and energy which they badly need in order to recover [39]. Bleeding is clearly associated with heat. This can also be seen in the case of menstruation. Menstruation is seen as being a hot period. I have no specific information on food restrictions during menstruation, except that informants told me that if bleeding is excessive the intake of hot food will be reduced and colder food taken, and that women with a hot constitution should avoid hot foods generally during this period. Before proceeding I would like to mention that hot and cold are not the only qualities ascribed to food. Foods are also described as being strengthening, difficult to digest (heavy), easy to digest (light) and flatulent (vayu). Strengthening foods are usually hot-they are strengthening because they generate energy. Foods which are heavy seem to be mainly cold. Cold foods tend to cause weakness--lack of energy-and this weakness can be manifested as weak or difficult digestion. Heavy foods are identified as being difficult to digest. Unlike the situation in other parts of India (for example Tamil Nadu) the qualities of strengthening, vayu, heavy and light appear to be relatively unimportant in the classification of foods and disease etiology in Bharuch. It is, however, notable that people whom I interviewed in two Tadavi villages seemed to place much greater emphasis on heavy and light than on hot and cold. I do not have sufficient

393

data to suggest whether this is an idiosyncrasy or whether the Tadavis generally place more emphasis on heavy-light. More research would be necessary on this point. Finally the hot-cold system as described above was almost the same as that described to me by two local vaids. There are, however, important differences between this popular system and that described to me by a prominent vaid in the city and in a number of ayurveda textbooks [49-511. This is not the place to go into details about the similarities and differences between ayurveda and the popular system in Bharuch, except to say that the latter appears to be a simplified and somewhat revised version of the ayurvedic tradition. Further research is necessary here. ANALYSIS

OF HOTXOLD

BELIEFS

During the last 20 years there have been a variety of approaches to the system of hot-cold beliefs. Many of these accounts are exclusively or almost exclusively descriptive [1420]. There have been a number of attempts to account for the origins of the system. One of these has tended to view its many manifestations as the result of diffusion from one or two main Old World sources [.5,28]. More recently, a number of writers have attempted to show that hotcold beliefs may also have indigenous, preconquest origin in South America [7, 81. In addition to this, and more central to the theme of this article, there have been a number of attempts to explain hot-cold beliefs in terms of some set of underlying principles. Thus, in his well-known article on Latin American folk medicine Currier [2] views the hot-cold system as a subsconscious model of social relations. It is a symbolic projection of social and psychological anxieties which have their origins in the trauma of weaning. According to Currier the hot-cold syndrome has its ultimate origin in “the unique combination of the historical background, the child rearing practices, and the social relationships characteristic of Latin American culture in general and of Mexican peasant culture in particular” (p. 261). Ingham [l] bases his analysis of the hotcold system in Latin America on Foster’s theory of limited good. The peasant view of limited good leads to reciprocity and an even distribution of wealth being highly valued. This concern with distribution and balance is also the main reason for peasants’ concern with balancing hot and cold in the body. Lindenbaum [25] combines symbolist and adaptationist approaches to hot-cold beliefs in Bangladesh. There milk is classified as hot. Diarrhea is also hot and as a result infants with diarrhea are fed diluted milk. Given the widespread presence of lactose intolerance in this part of the world, this practice is seen as beneficial. The different types of milk are also graded in terms of their heat value, and the hotter the milk, the more it is diluted before being given to the sick infant. It is striking that the heat grading of the different types of milk corresponds to their lactose content: the hotter the milk the higher the lactose content. Lindenbaum sees these hot-cold beliefs as a symbolic code which contains a “hidden biological

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ROBERT POOL

message”, i.e. it has adaptive value. She does, however, admit that not all symbolic codes are adaptive. Ferro-Luzzi [ 151 attempts to explain the avoidance of certain individual foods in terms of analogy and symbolic value. Thus she thinks that papaya is probably avoided during pregnancy in Tamil Nadu because its form resembles that of the female breast and is therefore a potent symbol (p. 104). In connection with the avoidance of pineapple she writes that “the sweetness of the fruit which hides an acidity might have put some people on their guard, and it may have resulted in pineapple being viewed as a treacherous food” (p. 105). The problem with these approaches is that they are all based on one or more of the following assumptions: (1) The classification of foods is consistent; (2) The classification of foods forms the central aspect of the hotxold system; (3) Revealing the principles of classification in a single cultural context constitutes an adequate explanation. (I) I will turn first to the question of the consistency of the system of food classification. In my research area there did appear to be a relatively large degree of consistency in the hot&cold classification of foods (i.e. among the tribal population, but with some evidence of a similar situation among some of the higher castes). A similar degree of consistency has been reported in the neighboring district of Chhotaudepur [18, 191, and in the western region of Madhya Pradesh [17]. Thiagarajan [26] also found a high degree of consistency in Ollapalayam village in the Coimbators district of Tamil Nadu (p. 85), while Ferro-Luzzi [16] says the same of Tamil Nadu as a whole. Not all writers are agreed on this, however. Apte [26] for example, claims that there was little consistency in the classification of food in Rampuram and Tanjore districts in Tamil Nadu (pp. 239 and 268), but she admits that the number of responses was too small to permit generalizations (p. 266). It is quite possible, as Hart [28] has suggested for the Philippines, that the amount of consistency in the classification of foods depends on the geographical scope of the survey, i.e. the larger the geographical area considered, the less overall consistency there will be. Thus within some areas, such as Bharuch, Chhotaudepur, western Madhya Pradesh and within various districts in Tamil Nadu there appears to be, generally speaking, a relatively high degree of consistency in the hot-cold classification of foods. But when Bharuch is compared to Chhotaudepur or Madhya Pradesh a number of differences appear. These differences become greater when Bharuch is compared to the Tamil Nadu districts and become fundamental when Bharuch is compared to the Philippines, Malaysia or Latin America. In a recent article Mathews [1 I] has suggested that previous writers have placed too much emphasis on the homogeneity of beliefs and have too eagerly sought to establish consistent systems of classification. Citing a number of recent publications she claims that intracultural variation in hot+old classification is much more widespread than has hitherto been suspected. In an analysis of food classification in Oaxaca. Mexico she shows that while there may be large differences in the hot
principles that serve to generate the categories in the first place. Thus it appears that consistency in the classification of foods, where it is present at all, is limited to relatively small geographical areas. Therefore generalizations about the adaptive significance of hot-cold beliefs which are based on the assumption of widespread consistency do not hold water. Lindenbaum’s adaptive explanation of milk being hot falls through with the knowledge that milk is cold in other parts of India. The same applies to Ferro-Luzzi’s rather arbitrary explanations of food avoidances in Tamil Nadu. Even Messer [lo], who claims that hot-cold classification in her research area are not uniformly consistent (p. 136), goes on to make such sweeping generalizations as “Among Indians, hot spicy, greasy dishes are hot; bland, unprocessed as well as pure milk product dishes, cool” (p. 137). (2) Many analyses of hot-cold beliefs proceed from the system of food classification. The classification of food is taken as being central and statements about similarities and variations in the system of hot
to the conclusion that it derives its ultimate from the problem of disease and injury”

Other authors have also commented on the centrality of the disease classification. Hart [28] states that the only way that the Bisiyan Filipinos can determine the quality of a food is “by experience: the reaction the food has on a healthy or sick person” (p. 21). More recently Laderman [36], writing on Malaysia, states that “the ultimate criterion informants give for determining whether a substance is hot or cold is its effect on their bodies” (p. 470). Messer [lo], writing on Latin America, also suggests that bodily signs are more central than food in hot-cold systems of classification (p. 137), and Greenwood [30] says the same in his articles on Morocco (p. 222). Given these statements I find it quite surprising that so many writers have still continued to proceed from the system of food classification and assume it to be central. Mathews’ article [l l] is an attempt to get at the underlying principles of the system, but she consciously leaves out a discussion of the procedures involved in classifying diseases (p. 834). An additional reason for taking the classification of diseases as a starting point is because it appears to be much more consistent than the classification of foods [30, p, 222; 10, p. 1411. (3) Mathews [l 1] has suggested that instead of attempting to construct a consistent hot&cold classification of foods where one does not, in fact, exist, one should rather be trying to expose the underlying principles of classification. While agreeing with this I still find her approach limited. Like the

Hot and cold as an explanatory model analyses of Currier, Ingham and Lindenbaum, it is only capable of revealing classificatory principles which are valid for a relatively small area or limited cultural context. Because hot-cold beliefs are present in many parts of the world from southeast Asia to north Africa to Latin America, I think that any proposed system of underlying classificatory principles must have more than merely local applicability. It must be valid for most, if not all, manifestations of the hotcold system. Proceeding from the assumption that it is diseases and bodily states rather than food which is central in the hot-cold system I will, in what follows, suggest a number of classificatory principles which appear to have widespread applicability.

THE PRINCIPLES OF CLASSIFICATION

Bharuch district In Bharuch the tribal people base their hot-cold classification of foods on the effect which these foods are perceived to have on the body. Thus they know that a certain food is hot because if they eat too much of it they will get a hot disease, and if they have a cold disease and eat hot food then they will get better. And they know which foods are cold because the consumption of these foods leads to cold diseases and cures hot diseases. By proceeding from this it becomes possible to reveal what appears to be certain underlying principles of the system. As far as I can tell, the hot and cold qualities of foods do not appear to be related to perceivable characteristics such as color, texture, etc. This is not, however, the case with the hot and cold diseases. At first sight the diseases in each category do not appear to have much in common. There seems to be no connection (at least not in terms of biomedical physiology and pathology) between, for example, skin diseases and diarrhea, or asthma and rheumatism. And why is T.B. classified differently to the (biomedically) related leprosy? There are, however, certain important (though perhaps not bio-medically important) characteristics which the diseases in each category have in common. If the concepts of hot and cold are taken literally in the conventional sense then they signify thermal states or differences in temperature. Apart from the tactile sensations of heat and cold, these differences are manifested in the natural world in various qualitative phenomena. Heat appears as melting, boiling, expansion and expulsion. Cold appears as freezing, solidification, coagulation and congestion. These phenomena are also the most salient features of the diseases in the hot and cold categories. The symptoms of all the skin diseases are manifested on the outer surface of the body. The same applies to vitiligo and leprosy. All these diseases are seen as being caused by excessive heat in the body which has to ‘come out’. Piles become manifest through expansion and externalization and diarrhea and vomiting by ‘melting’ and expulsion-the excess heat is seen as flowing out of the body in the form of liquid. Hyper-acidity and urinary infections are accompanied by a burning sensation and expulsion. Constipation, on the other hand, is a cold complaint

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and it is characterized by ‘freezing’, congestion and solidification. The most important cold diseases such as coughs, colds, asthma, breathlessness, bronchitis and T.B. are all characterized by congestion (of the lungs and respiratory tract). Rheumatism is characterized by the ‘congestion’ and ‘freezing’ of the joints. Cold diseases are usually situated deep in the body with no signs on the outer surface (in the lungs, joints, muscles) while hot diseases are usually manifested on the surface of the body (skin) or as an excretion (blood, diarrhea). This principle is clearly illustrated in the case of ear and eye infections, both common Bharuch. Eye infections are clearly visible because the eyes are swollen and red (redness is also generally a characteristic of hot diseases), whereas ear infections are not usually visible and situated deeper in the body. With this in mind it is hardly surprising to discover that eye infections are hot and ear infections cold. Hot diseases are generally seen as being caused by hot food which enters the body and causes a build-up of excessive heat which then moves in an outward direction, flowing out of the body in the form of a liquid or passing directly through the skin causing spots, ulcers, etc. on the surface. Cold diseases are less often seen as being caused by food and are usually caused by cold from the environment entering the body and producing congestion deep in its interior. This system becomes even clearer when we look at the beliefs surrounding pregnancy. Pregnant women avoid hot food during the first trimester because they fear abortion and rativa; and they avoid cold food during the third trimester because they want to avoid a difficult delivery. It should be noted that abortion, which may be caused by too much hot food, can be seen as the ‘melting’ and expulsion of the fetus, whereas a difficult delivery is the internalization of the fetus and the congestion of the womb. A layer of ‘fat’ which coagulates around the fetus because of too much cold food is one of the main causes of this congestion, and it is seen by some respondents as being ‘melted’ by the heat from hot food eaten during the third trimester. This hot food is also seen as generating the heat necessary to expel the fetus. After the delivery hot food is eaten “to expel the remaining dust and dirt from the womb”. But this may also increase bleeding (‘melting’, expulsion) and if bleeding becomes excessive then the intake of hot food will be reduced and cold food eaten (to congest and ‘freeze’). Thus, unlike the hot and cold qualities of foods, the qualities of diseases and bodily states appear to be related to their most important (or most manifest) characteristics. Parallels in other areas Describing hotcold beliefs in south India Beck [13] writes that excess heat is thought of as “building up within the body” while excess cold is seen as “attacking from without” [42]. Cold complaints are usually invisible but painful, whereas hot complaints are visible on the surface of the body but not painful (p. 562). In Hindu culture emissions of semen-as night emissions or during urination in men and as vaginal

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discharge in women-are thought to be caused by excess heat [43]. Hart [28], describing Bisiyan Filipino etiology, writes that boils and most skin diseases are thought to be the result of excessive bodily heat, “. . . in its efirts to escape, the heat produces eruptions and swellings”. For smallpox (a hot disease) the patient purposely drinks a hot concoction to ‘drive out’ the pox, and then switches to cold food. Cold diseases are seen as being caused by “cold entering the body”. while hot disease are caused by heat “trying to escape” (p. 23). The Balangingi, a moslem group on Tictauan Island in the Philippines, have four major diseases categories. (I) Swelling (boils, goitre, smallpox); (2) hot (smallpox, gangrenous erisipelas); (3) pain/ache (headache, stomachache) and (4) cold (measles. chills, malaria). There is a connection between hot and swelling diseases. Swelling and redness are seen as the result of too much heat in the body. There is also a connection between the cold and the ache/pain categories [28, p. 531. Currier, in his widely read article on folk medicine in Latin America [2], writes that cold diseases are usually characterized by disablement; the sensory and motor function of the body are disrupted or completely stopped. In almost all cases such diseases are thought to be caused by the “intrusion of a quantity of coldness into a part of the body”. In contrast. diseases which are the result of excessive heat are usually “generated from within the body itself” (p. 255). “While sensations of pain are usually cold, sensations of irritation are usually hot. All skin ailments I know of are caused by excessive heat on the surfaces of the body. It is thus a general principle qf‘this system pathologythat cold harms the individual by invading his body from without, wjhile heat harms the individual by expanding (or being displaced) ,from the centre of the body outwsard to its swfaces. Finally, hot illnesses are not only visible but conspicuous to the outside world, taking the form of skin eruptions. fever, coatings and hoarsness. Cold illnesses, on the other hand, are often not at all visible to the outside world: their principal symptoms are pain and immobility” [2. p. 255, emphasis added].

of

Finally Greenwood [30] writes that in Moroccan “while cold moves downwards humoral medicine, and inwards and lingers there, heat moves upwards and outwards and is soon dissipated as skin eruptions and head and eye disorders” (p. 255). Hot food makes the skin flushed and relieves stiffness and aching; cold food makes the body cold, stiff and aching (p. 222). There is also a clear relationship between hot ailments and blood on the one hand and cold ailments and phlegm on the other. According to Greenwood, in Morocco excess blood is thought to be hot while excess phlegm is cold (pp. 221 and 224). Currier states that in Latin America the presence of blood in any of the symptoms of an illness is usually sufficient to identify it as hot [2, p. 2571. In Malaysia, Laderman writes [36], blood is recognized as a hot humor and phlegm as a cold humor. The organizing principle is that of sliminess. Slimy substances-the mucus of a runny nose, egg whites, some bananas, etc.-are all cold. Also phlegm, because it is cold, can “coagulate

within the human body”. A knotted muscle is referred to as “a lump of phlegm” and clots of phlegm cause the blood flow to slow down, leading to headaches, leg-aches, pain and paralysis of the facial muscles (p. 472). This association between blood and heat and phlegm and cold is also implicit in the classification of illnesses in Bharuch and in the other parts of India mentioned in this article. It is, however, quite likely that in India the association is derived from the ayurvedic tradition whereas in Latin America it has its source in Greek humoral pathology. Consistenq

The underlying principles which I have described are of course not 100% consistent, but this cannot be reasonably expected given the nature of the phenomena in question and the scantiness of much of the data. The point is that they appear to be relatively more consistent and to have much wider applicability than previously suggested principles. With this in mind I will now briefly mention a few of the more striking inconsistencies and show that some of them at least are only inconsistent at first sight. Firstly, the fact that diarrhea is sometimes classified as a cold disease, for example in Morocco [30, p. 2241, Mexico [2, p. 2541 and Peru [12, p. 12651, seems, at first sight, to contradict the principles which I have been suggesting. It is possible that here the cramps and pain which often accompany various forms of diarrhea are more important or more central (deep pain and cramps are generally cold) than the phenomena of expulsion and ‘melting’. In his classification table of Moroccan illnesses Greenwood groups intestinal cramps together with diarrhea [30, p. 2241. I suspect that, in areas where diarrhea is cold, the presence of blood in the stools may result in its being classified as hot (as Currier had described for Mexico) [2, p. 2541. In this connection Greenwood also writes that menstruation, which is usually a hot condition, is thought to be cold in Morocco. Here also it appears that the cramps rather than the blood are more central [30, p. 2271. When considered more closely, therefore, these cases do not contradict the suggested principles but merely suggest that, in different contexts, different symptoms may be taken as central. Secondly, there is the case of T.B. It is classed as a cold disease in Bharuch, but among the Bisayan Filipinos, in Telok Kumba in Malaysia [28], and in Morocco [30, p. 2261 it is classified as hot. I suspect that this variation may be a result of the fact that, although T.B. may be seen as a congesting disease because of the coughing, etc., it may also be accompanied by the coughing up of blood, which is a sign of excess heat. Thirdly, pregnancy is generally considered to be a hot state. However, Laderman claims that this belief is incongruent with Malay beliefs that heat is antithetical to the formation and development of the fetus. In fact, she says, attempts at abortion usually include the ingestion of hot substances [36, p. 4721. It may appear contradictory that the state of pregnancy is hot in one area and cold in another, but the belief that pregnancy is cold does not contradict the general principle that cold leads to congestion, coagulation,

Hot and cold as an explanatory model solidification, etc. (i.e. fetus formation), whereas heat leads to melting and expulsion (i.e. abortion). Here, as in the case of diarrhea it seems to be a question of which symptoms are taken as central and which as peripheral. A more problematical point, and one for which I have no explanation, is Currier’s remark that in Mexico it is excess heat which is seen as producing the sticky layer around the fetus which causes it to stick in the womb [2, p. 2571. Here more data is necessary on exactly how these people perceive and explain such phenomena as conception, pregnancy and delivery; and how they relate these to the hot-cold system. Finally there is the fact that in some areas, mainly Latin America, hot illnesses are seen as being caused by cold, and vice versa, whereas in most other areas where hot-cold beliefs prevail hot diseases are caused by heat and cold diseases by cold. This is because in these former countries cold is seen as entering the body and forcing the heat which is already there into a smaller area, thus leading to excess heat in that area which results in hot illness. For example when someone who is in a heated condition walks barefoot on a cold floor the cold rises up through the feet and legs driving the heat up into the chest and head [2, p. 2551. In addition to these inconsistencies it may also be argued that the classification of diseases is simply based on variations in seasonal morbidity. After all the most important hot diseases (skin diseases, diarrhea) are much more common during the summer, while the most important cold diseases (respiratory and rheumatic diseases) are more common during winter. One could argue that the people must have noticed this fact and started classifying the diseases accordingly. This explanation sounds plausible but it does not take all the relevant facts into account. In the first place, there are a number of diseases which fall clearly within one of the categories but which are not seasonal, for example leprosy and T.B. In the second place the whole system of beliefs surrounding pregnancy and delivery would fall outside this explanation, unless abortions and easy deliveries are more common in the summer and difficult deliveries in the winter, which seems unlikely.

CONCLUSIONS

While taking a number of exceptions into account, and given the incomplete nature of much of the available data, the following cautious generalizations seem justified, at least with regard to Bharuch district, south India, some parts of Latin America and southeast Asia and Morocco. (1) Hot diseases are generally seen as being caused by too much heat in the body. The symptoms of these diseases are caused by the externalization of excess heat from the center of the body to its outer surface. The symptoms are externally visible and include redness of the skin, swelling, boils, rashes and other skin maladies, liquid flowing out of the body (diarrhea, vomiting, bleeding, emissions of semen) and abortion. Hot diseases are not generally painful but are often characterized by irritation. Treatment is by opposites, i.e. hot diseases are treated with cold remedies.

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(2) Cold diseases are generally seen as being caused by too much cold entering the body. Here the symptoms are the result of the internalization of the excess cold deep in the body. The symptoms are less visible but are often painful and disabling. They include deep bodily pains, rheumatism, paralysis, congestion (of the lungs, respiratory tract, intestines and womb). Treatment is with hot remedies. I think that the primary explanation of the hotcold system of beliefs should not be sought exclusively in symbolic or adaptive theory, but should also take into account the way in which these ideas are used. They are used to explain diseases and related phenomena and it therefore seems reasonable to view them as an “explanatory model” [44]. In what follows I will briefly describe a number of characteristics which suggest that the hotcold system of beliefs may indeed be interpreted as an explanatory model. In part I of his article “African traditional thought and western science” [45] Robin Horton describes the salient characteristics of explanatory models [46]. According to Horton explanatory theory is basically a quest for unity, simplicity, regularity and order underlying the apparent diversity, complexity, anomaly and disorder of the natural world [45, p. 511. Explanatory theory places the phenomena of the natural world in a wider causal context. Natural effects in the visible, tangible world are linked to antecedent phenomena (natural causes) in the same world by reference to theoretical entities [45, p. 541. The phenomena of the natural world are broken up or abstracted, analyzed and then reintegrated into a wider causal context [45, p. 621. Theoretical explanations tend to be founded on an analogy between the puzzling and the familiar. In an explanatory model “something akin to the familiar is postulated as the reality underlying the unfamiliar” [45, p. 641. By “familiar phenomena” Horton means “phenomena strongly associated in the mind of the observer with order and regularity” [45, p. 641. This is all quite plausible if we remember that the aim of explanation is to disclose order and regularity underlying chaos. However, it is usually only limited aspects of the familiar phenomena which are used in the explanatory model [45, p. 651, and once the model has been constructed the source of the analogy may be obscured (by modifications) [45, p. 661. In this light it becomes possible to view the hot&cold system as an explanatory theory, akin to scientific theories in the West [47]. I suggest that in the hotcold theory puzzling phenomena such as birth, pregnancy, diseases and death are explained and made understandable and predictable by reducing them to, or seeing them in terms of familiar phenomena. The familiar phenomena in this case are those which accompany temperature changes in nature-melting, freezing, expansion, contraction, expulsion and congestion. These phenomena are ‘seen’ as underlying diseases and bodily processes. I say ‘seen’ because people are never explicit about this, and indeed they cannot be explicit because the analogy appears to be subconscious. As is the case with Horton’s explanatory models, not all aspects of temperature change are used in the hotcold system. Thus in the explanation of diseases in Bharuch actual temperature plays a secondary

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role, and many diseases only manifest some of the phenomena which are associated with the relevant temperature state. For example, in the skin diseases there is nothing akin to melting. The theoretical entities in the hot-cold system are heat and cold. Natural causes (diet, weather, constitution, etc.) are linked to natural effects (disease, abortion, etc.) by means of these theoretical entities. In this way puzzling phenomena in the natural world are explained by relating them to other phenomena which are characterized by order and regularity. Thus according to Horton, models are attempts to make sense of the chaotic phenomena of the real world by relating them to some basic underlying system of order. All people theorize to some extent and their explanations appear to be structured in the same way. Acknowledgements-I

would like to thank Ratan .I. Vasava, without whose assistance this research would not have been possible, and Klaas van der Veen for his support during the research and advice during the preparation of this article. I would also like to thank Sjaak van der Geest for his suggestions and advice. REFERENCES 1. Ineham 70: 76,

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theory 4. Logan M. H. Selected references to the hotxold of disease. Med. Anrhrop. Newsl. 6, 8, 1975. Latin American legacy: 5. Foster G. M. Hippocrates’ “hot” and “cold” in contemporary folk medicine. In Colloquia in Anthropology (Edited by Whetherington R. K.), p. 3. Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Tex., 1978. problems in the study of 6 Foster G. M. Methodological intracultural variation: the hot-cold dichotomy in Tzintzuntzan. Hum. Org. 38. 179, 1979. and the treatment of 7 Colson A. B. Binary o
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variation in humoral 11. Mathews H. F. Context-specific classification. Am. Anrhrop. 85, 826, 1983. 12. Escobar G. J., Salazar E. and Chuy M. Beliefs regarding the etiology of infantile diarrhea in Lima, Peru. Sot. Sci. Med. 17, 1257, 1983. 13. Beck B. Colour and heat in south Indian ritual. Man 4, 553, 1969. G. E. Food avoidances at puberty and 14. Ferro-Luzzi menstruation in Tamilnad. In Food, Ecology and Culture: Readings

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T., Gupta A. and Saxena K. The phenom19. Gopaldas enon of sanskritization in a forest dwelling tribe of Gujarat, India. Nutrient intake and practices in special groups. Ecol. Fd Nutr. 13, I, 1983. T., Saxena K. and Gupta A. Intrafamilial 20. Gopaldas distribution of nutrients in a deep forest dwelling tribe in Gujarat. India. Ecol. Fd Nutr. 13, 69. 1983. in 21. Gould H. A. Modern medicine and folk cognition rural India. In Culture. Disease and Healing: Studies in Medical Anthropology (Edited by Landy D.), p. 495. Macmillan, London, 1977. 22. Kakar D. N. Folk and Modern Medicine. New Asian Publishers, Delhi, 1977. to child conception: an 23. Mani S. B. From marriage ethnomedical study in rural Tamil Nadu. In The Socia/ and Cultural Context of Medicine in India (Edited by Gupta G. R.), p. 194. Vikas, New Delhi, 1981. 24. Wandei M. et al. Heaty and cooling foods in relation to food habits in a southern Sri Lanka community. Ecol. Fd Nutr.

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25

Lindenbaum S. The “last course”: nutrition and anthropology in Asia. In Nutrition and Anthropology in Action (Edited by Fitzgerald T. K.), p. 141. van Gorkum, Assen, 1977. 26 Ashkenez E. L., Krishnamurthy L.. Thiagarajan D., Moffat M. and Apte J. The Tamil Nadu Nutritional Study, Vol. II, Section B: Cultural Anthropology and Nutrition Report IO U.S.A.I.D. Sydney M. Cantor, Haverford, Penn., 1973. 27 Wilson C. S. Food taboos of childbirth: the Malay example. In Food, Ecology and Culture: Readings in the Anthropology of Dietary Practices (Edited by Robson J. R. K.), p. 67. Gordon & Breach, London. 1980. 28 Hart D. V. Bisayan Filipino and Malayan Humoral Pathology: Folk Medicine and Ethnohistory in Southeast Asia. Data Paper 76, Dept of Asian Studies, Cornell

University, Ithaca, N.Y., 1969. Manderson L. Roasting, smoking and dieting in response to birth: Malay confinement in cross-cultural perspective. Sot. Sci. Med. 15, 509, 1981. B. Cold or spirits? Choice and ambiguity in 30. Greenwood Morocco’s pluralistic medical system. Sot. Sci. Med. 15,

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marks) 31. The words ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ (without quotation will henceforth refer to these abstract qualities unless otherwise stated. 32. Vayu (wind) and pitham (bile) are two of the three humors in the ayurvedic theory of the tridosha, the third being kapha (phlegm). In ayurveda one of these humors is thought to be dominant in each person, thus leading to particular constitutions. 33. In India there is often a relation between coldness and purity and between heat and pollution. A brahmin in a ritually pure state is considered to be cool. Abstention from sex enhances ritual purity and keeps the body cool.

Hot and cold as an explanatory 34. Some of these categories tend to overlap because I have used the categories as given to me by respondents and translated with the help of an interpreter and two allopathic doctors. 35. This article is concerned with the naturalistic etiology of the Bharuch tribals. As a result little attention is paid to personalistic causal factors which certainly play an important role in such diseases as measles and smallpox and also epilepsy. On the nature of personalistic and naturalistic etiologies see Foster G. Disease etiologies in nonwestern societies. Am. Anthrop. 78, 773, 1976. that rafiva may be congenital 36. Kusin has suggested syphilis in bio-medical terms (personal communication). It is however, also possible that rativa is a collection of many different (bio-medical) pathological conditions. had been told by her brother who 37 One respondent works at the leprosy department that leprosy is caused by eating unfresh fish. 38 One local allopathic doctor suggested that suwaroq was probably puerperal fever in bio-medical terms. 39. Food avoidances during pregnancy arc discussed in more detail in a separate publication, which is forthcoming. 40 Laderman C. Symbolic and empirical reality: a new approach to the analysis of food avoidances. Am. Erhnol. 8, 468, 198 1. 41. Here generalization is made difficult by the fact that most authors do not provide detailed lists of hot and cold diseases in their research areas. I therefore have to make do with the odd list and scattered references. 42. Emphasis in all quotations mine. 43. Obeyeskere G. The impact of ayurvedic ideas on the culture and the individual in Sri Lanka. In Asian Medical Systems (Edited by Leslie C.), p. 201. University of California Press, Berkeley, Calif., 1976.

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44. Here I am using “explanatory model” in the sense in which it is used by Horton [45,46]. Kleinman’s concept of explanatory model is connected to particular illness episodes. See Kleinman A. Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture. An Exploration of the Borderland Between Anthropology, Medicine and Psychiatry. Universitv of California Press. Berkelev. Calif., 1981. A discussion of Kleinman’s concept of explanatory models in relation to hot-cold beliefs would be interesting, but is beyond the scope of this article. R. African traditional thought and western 45. Horton science. Africa 37, 50, 1967. 46. I am aware that Horton has revised his 1967 article, but the characteristics which I will describe have remained essentially the same in the new article. See Horton R. Tradition and modernity revisited. In Rafionality and Relativism (Edited by Hollis M. and Lukes S.), p. 201. Blackwell, London, 1982. 47. Parallels between folk medical theory and western medical science have already been described by a number of authors. See for example Erasmus C. J. Changing folk beliefs and the relativity of empirical knowledge. Southwest J. Anthrop. 8,411, 1952; and Willis R. G. Pollution and paradigms. Man 7, 362, 1972. 48. These factors will be discussed in more detail in a separate article. 49. Jaggi 0. P. A History of Science and Technology in India, Vol. III, Folk Medicine. Ram, Delhi, 1973. G. C. Introduction to Ayurveda. Shri Gulab50. Thakkur kunverba Ayurvedic Society, Jamnagar, 1975. system of medicine. In 51. Udupa K. N. The ayurvedic Health by the People (Edited by Newell K. W.), p. 53. WHO, Geneva, 1975.