Historical Pathway of Medical Pluralism in Sri Lanka

Abstract

A medical system is a collection of ideas, beliefs, and actions in a community with regard to health and ill health. And since health and ill health have been confronted by humans since the beginning of humanity, ideas, attitudes, and actions surrounding these two states possess a history as old as man. Every society has developed systems in accordance with its beliefs and attitudes and has resources to respond to diseases. The systems of medicine developed by different societies are responses to prevailing diseases. The systems of medicine and customs related to health are a product of a country’s history, birthed and improved within a certain environmental and cultural framework. Hence, social scientists consider these medical systems to be cultural systems, as they have been born out of culture. Globally, there are systems of medicine delineated according to geographical zones, which have been defined by their inimitable socio-cultural characteristics. Sri Lanka is home to a successful system of pluralistic medicine. However, the situation can be identified as a result of the gradual development of medical systems over different time periods. Within this background, the paper aims to discuss the historical development of Sri Lanka’s pluralistic system of medicine under several stages: pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods. By using existing secondary data, a literature survey has been done to identify the elements and other characteristics of particular medical systems at different stages. Accordingly, biomedicine and homeopathy were born in Western Europe, while Ayurveda is the predominant system in Sri Lanka. In addition, Deshiya Chikithsa and other home-grown medical systems have been used for people’s various treatment purposes since the pre-colonial period. In the context of today’s globalization, medical pluralism retains its analytical importance, especially in the examination of people’s search for alternative cures locally and transnationally, the growing consumer market of ‘holistic’, ‘traditional’, and ‘natural’ treatments, and the attempts to incorporate alternative treatments into national healthcare.