India is uniquely posed toward a "national medical integration of it's existing non mainstream medicine (grouped under an acronym ayush) streams with that of mainstream medicine. This is also a nationalist resurgence of Indian Medicine, Ayurveda that was slowly and systematically weakened during India's dominion by the British. This resurgence is partly inspired by our neighbor China who have successfully integrated many areas of Traditional Chinese medicine with Western medicine and successfully under Prof Tu spearheaded the application of Traditional Chinese Medicine at the time of a malaria epidemic in the 1960s which eventually led to a Nobel Prize. The Chinese Medical Association wholeheartedly supported this as a matter of national pride. (Ref:Su X-Z and Miller LH. The discovery of artemisinin and the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. Sci China Life Sci 2015; 58: 1175–1179.)
As a part of this resurgence in India every national laboratory, especially those belonging to medical institutes and other government-funded institutions,
will be encouraged to research AYUSH systems, collectively funded by
national agencies to ensure that the discoveries from traditional Indian Medicine receive acknowledgement, much like the Nobel prize-winning work of Chinese Prof Tu Youyou. (Reference: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/
British bridge course and spurt of national medical integration in intermittent 100 year cycles:
Just to address the question of when mainstream Indian medicine (the ideal integrative medicine of that time), became disintegrated we may need to review the fascinating 200 year old history of an apparent bridge course floated by the British for getting native Indian students for its newly opened college to begin training the natives who were practicing Ayurveda. Ayurveda was much more popular in India than Western Medicine at that time and the British worried themselves silly that there would be no takers among the natives for the mbbs course that they were planning to begin for the first time in India. At that time a popular course for learning Ayurveda was the Baidyak discipline in Sanskrit College, Kolkata. In 1835, the British set up the (Modern? British?) Medical College near Sanskrit College, Kolkata.
The Baidyak discipline was discontinued at the Sanskrit College and one of its Ayurvedic teachers joined Medical College as an assistant teacher.
He studied Western medicine along with the students and passed in 1840. In 1845, he became the Superintendent of the Hindusthani medium. In 1848, he was promoted to a first class sub-assistant surgeon. In 1852, the Bengali medium was opened at the Medical College for the first time. Gupta took charge as the Superintendent of the Bengali medium.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
First attempt at national medical integration in India 100 years back :
Further reading on nationalist movements in medical education may take us to 1921 when national medical college was born from an earlier experience of its allopath founder who previously served as a principal of Baidyasastra Pathi."
While Kabiraj Bachaspati was the principal of the Ayurvedic section, Sundarimahan was the principal of the allopathic section of the institution. Sundari Mohan advocated independent research in Ayurveda on scientific lines. His greatest contribution along this line was the establishment of the "Jatiya Ayurbigyan Vidyalaya" in 1921, (also known as Calcutta National Medical College) founded as a product of the Non-cooperation movement. It was inaugurated by Subhas Chandra Bose. Calcutta National Medical College was nationalized in 1967. Perhaps the first private medical college in India to be nationalized.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
Exactly 100 years later this year Indian national health policy makers are all set to create a fresh framework for national medical integration. Scholarly integration of Medical education can offer that framework.
In the next section we proceed to describe that framework.
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