Well-Mannered Medicine

In Well-Mannered Medicine, Dagmar Wujastyk has crafted an intelligent and insightful take on the ethical terrain covered by the Ayurvedic medical tradition ... Wujastyk's skill as a reader of ancient texts and of modern temperament distinguishes this work from other contemporary takes on Ayurveda ... It is a remarkable and elegant read, thoughtful at every turn, and unrelentingly learned. --Rachel Berger, Asian Medicine Wujastyk admirably places Ayurveda precisely where it needs to be: out of the hands of nationalist-extremists and into the disciplinary realms of the histories of medicine and science. Much of this material is about professionalization and the history of the medical discipline as it existed in the early centuries of the first millennium. We need more books on Ayurveda like this one, and I would like to note here that this book has won a permanent place on my graduate syllabus it is a wonderful book from which to teach, and Well-Mannered Medicine would be an excellent addition to courses on South Asian culture, ethics, and the history of education. --Journal of the American Oriental Society Dagmar Wujastyk's thorough study of medical ethics in classical Ayurvedic texts adds substantially to our knowledge of Ayurveda as a medical system. Ethics here includes the moral attributes required of a physician, personal presentation, medical education, the doctor-patient relationship, medical deception, and much more. In this first rate study, Wujastyk avoids the danger of evaluating Ayurveda from the standpoint of Western medicine. This is required reading for everyone with an interest in Indian medicine or cross-cultural medical history. --Frederick M. Smith, Professor of Sanskrit and Classical Indian Religions, University of Iowa