Research Paper:
Smallpox in Two Systems of Knowledge
By Frederique Apffel Marglin
Prepared for the UNU/WIDER Planning Meeting on Systems of Knowledge as Systems of Domination - July 1987

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Conclusion:

The lessons which perhaps can be generalized from this study to other cases is that the superiority of the scientific medical system of knowledge over other systems which do not separate naturalistic from religious discourses cannot be taken as an a priori. Efficacious, grass-root and cheap techniques of healing do not require such a separation. The perceived superiority of the scientific system stems from its hegemonic character. The separation of rationality and the pursuit of truth from religion may have been a necessity in the West where a hierarchically organized church had the power to legislate what was to be considered truth and what falsehood, and the power to punish those found to be in error. In India there is no corresponding ecclesiastic centralized pyramidal hierarchy, no cannon, no dogma, no powers to legislate truth and falsehood. On the contrary there is a long tradition of seeing truth as many-sided and approaches to it as many-pathed. The variolators were low status people. Their practices were not opposed by brahmins, the custodians of Sanskrit literature. Both high and low castes joined in worshipping Sitala", accepting each others' techniques and theories. Today in the cult of Orissan healing goddesses, untouchable healers and brahmin priests join together at her festival. The lesson of this study is not only that one should not accept the prima facie superiority of scientific medicine over other healing traditions but that the scientific medical system may - in spite of many spectacular technical achievements - be fundamentally flawed in respect to its socio-political and moral consequences and perhaps even its physiological consequences. In absolutely negativizing disease, suffering and death, in opposing these to health and life in a mutually exclusive manner, the scientific medical system of knowledge can separate in individuals and in populations what is absolutely bad, the enemy to be eradicated, from what is good, health and life. In the process it can and does objectify people with all the repressive political possibilities that objectification opens. In the process it blocks the possibility of integrating disease, suffering, and death to life and displaces outside the self, community or nation, the rage and anger at suffering and death with catastrophic consequences. These have been investigated and detailed by Lifton and can be as serious as mass violence, genocide and nuclearism.

In the view of such findings it is not sufficient to suspend until further investigation the belief in the prima facie superiority of scientific medicine, but it becomes necessary to appraise such a system critically. It becomes necessary to look at older healing traditions with appropriate methodologies which rescues them from the dust bin of irrationality in order to find less potentially dangerous modes of thought and action.

Image:
The pictures made by Indian artists for the British in India are called Company paintings. This one comes from a volume containing 30 folios depicting castes, occupations, methods of cultivation and processional scenes. It shows three religious mendicant (begging) couples. The man carrying five pots containing Neem leaves on his head is a devotee of Shitala or Mariyamma. She is a goddess of smallpox and other infectious diseases. He and his wife hold small pellet drums (damaru), and the identifying inscription is in Tamil. The woman in the dark blue sari holds a shrine containing a seated figure of Bhairava (Shiva), while her husband beats a long drum (mridanga). The man on the extreme right carries a stick, a bowl and a razor, while his wife holds their baby in a sling round her neck. The inscription is in Telugu.

Image and text credit:
Copyright: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London