How Religion Shapes The Ideology Of The Indian Biomedical System

Religion plays a vital role in Indian medicine; religion is part of the very foundation that shapes the ideology of the Indian medical system. The traditional Indian medicine is almost a complete contradiction to the western biomedical system. For the most part, it is known how diseases are managed in the biomedical system, there are shots when it is flu season, there is an emphasis on staying home when you are sick and may be contagious, and there is a huge assortment of medicine designed for carrying illnesses. This exposition will explore how diseases are managed in Indian, more specifically, this writing will examine how illnesses are managed at a local level in South India; the information in this exposition stems from actual case studies in South India. In southern Indian there is not a great

Indian medicine is completely holistic, there is not a thing as one cause for a disease, instead there a multitude of causes that range from lifestyle choices, evil spirits, and religious commitment, to name a few. Due to diseases having a pleather of causes there is a lot of treatment options. There is no such thing as one cause and one treatment in southern India. In a case study written by Lambert, the patient had the flu, received a shot and he was still getting worse, thus proving to the family that the standard biomedical treatment of the flu, which consisted of a shot, would simply not suffice. Of course, there are multiple treatments for one disease in biomedicine, but traditional Indian medicine has a completely holistic view of health, which in turn affect the way South India manage diseases. Since there are multiple causes for one disease a patient may stay at a temple for months and go through several religious rituals and other forms of treatment until his or her family consider them to be balanced again (Cohen,