Namaste Ayurveda!

The YouTube clip shown above is a part of a four video series about the philosophy of Ayurveda taught by Dr. Mamta Landerman. This video has been chosen for analysis to provide a narrative from the perspective of the Ayurvedic practitioner, first-hand. The ethnography by Jean Langford sent out a slightly ethnocentric vibe which seemed fairly apparent from the beginning of her article, stating her skepticism early on and offering a critical tone about the practices of Dr. Mistry, and perhaps even Ayurvedic medicine itself. Langford provided bits and pieces of Dr. Mistry’s dialogue, which could have possibly been manipulated in her writing style to give the reader a particular impression that could further support the author’s argument. The reason for showing this clip is because there is no middle man to report the facts, so it’s a very neutral ground. Another reason is because these videos are filmed at a school, Kerala Ayurveda Academy. I think it’s important to keep in mind that Dr. Mistry was described to have not graduated with a degree in Ayurveda, yet somehow he has managed to provide so much care and treatment to hundreds and hundreds of patients per day, for only five minutes each. To be able to understand the ideologies behind how the practice of a labeled “quack” succeeds, we must also compare and contrast it to what’s being taught at a school.

One very noticeable thing shown in the video as opposed to the way Ayurveda is described in the article Medical Mimesis is the fact “Philosophy of Ayurveda” manages to connect this form of medicine to realism rather than an acceptance of magic. Langford mentions that “the study of Ayurveda became a site for the consolidation of modern science against superstition,” however, she also mentions that Dr. Mistry was “obviously aware of the magical aura of pulse diagnosis” (33). The video above talks about the bridge between Ayurveda and the body/mind/spirit by attacking the cause using natural remedies. Dr. Mistry is unable to explain the processes behind the diagnoses of his patients, which makes one wonder if this could be from the lack of education he received at an institution, yet be able to supplement his “quackery” through years of experience to be able to actually treat his patients at his clinic and eventually become a reputable practitioner of Ayurveda. Dr. Mamta Landerman, in all her four videos dives into great detail how there are different causes of a single disease and multiple symptoms, and she gives a very holistic lesson of this form of medicine – describing it as “the wisdom of life of everything that travels in life, how to live well, how to live long, how to come back on track.” One common argument that both Dr. Mistry and Dr. Mamta Landerman share is that there is a whole lot of psychological aspects of the patient that will help the patient recover or be fully treated. Dr. Landerman says that “it’s much more effective to treat their mental attitudes than it is just treating their physical,” whereas Harvard studies show that “when a patient is just being treated physically, they may or may not get better.” This closely relates to the same viewpoint shared by Dr. Mistry when Langford transcribes him saying “80 percent of illness is psychological” (40). Perhaps Dr. Mamta Landerman, whose approach to Ayurveda is much more holistic, stresses less on the power of the mind than Dr. Mistry does, because Dr. Mistry’s belief in the mind and possible understanding of placebo effects is just enough for him to be able to treat patients successfully. Dr. Landerman might be conjoining psychology with additional sects of Ayurveda to let her students understand the meaning and reasoning behind diagnoses and treatments to give students a feeling of confidence, something that Dr. Mistry has plenty of.

And exactly are some of the things that Dr. Mamta is emphasizing along with the power of the mind? Physiology. As you watch the end of the video and the beginning of the second video, you’ll see she goes on to talk about an anti-oxidant called curcumin which “goes through the cell walls and into the nucleus of the cell.” This is an interesting point made because you normally don’t hear about traditional medicine being linked in a biomedical way to the physiological and scientific body. The way Dr. Landerman teaches the foundations of Ayurveda differs a lot from the way it is presented by Dr. Mistry. The question of Ayurveda seen as a science is awoken by the lecture of Dr. Landerman. Vincanne Adams says “the meanings of ‘science’ … [varies] on the basis of not only method and content, but also on the basis of the transcultural, political, and historical conditions that give rise to the use of the term and the efforts to translate it in locations that have not parsed their knowledge in the same ways as those places from which ‘western science’ is now deployed” (570). The origin of Ayurveda is from India, yet Dr. Landerman is giving a lecture in English, and occasionally mentioning American culture-specific items like a McDonald’s quarter-pounder and such. With the idea of Ayurveda spreading to other countries and becoming a more popular form of medicine and means of explaining physical and natural phenomena, it shouldn’t be surprising that Ayurveda has taken shape as a science.



Jean M. Langford, 1999. “Medical Mimesis: Healing Signs of a Cosmoplitan ‘Quack’.” American Ethnologist 26(1): 24-46.

Landerman, Mamta. "Philosophy of Ayurveda. (Kerala Ayurveda Academy)." YouTube. Web. 28 Jan. 2011. .

Vincanne Adams. 2001. “The Sacred in the Scientific: Ambiguous Practice of Science in Tibetan Medicine.” Cultural Anthropology 16(4): 542-575.

House is in the house!

After reading both Good’s and Adams’ articles this week about “mediating,” the first person that should come to mind is the fictional diagnostician portrayed in the Fox series House. Gregory House is a medical genius who is seen constantly dealing with mysterious symptoms and diseases of patients all around the world. What sets him apart from all other medical geniuses is his attitude, pill-popping demeanor, and personality which in turn influences the way he practices and treats patients (treat meaning both medically and personally). Before we can analyze the different acts shown in the above YouTube video using the lenses provided by Good and Adams, it’s substantial to understand the background behind this particular doctor to help form critiques or supportive arguments. Although this is a fictional television series, we must take a look into why House is the doctor who everyone around the world turns to and if his style of practice is congruent with the attributes described by Adams and Good as most productive and successful.

Gregory House attended Johns Hopkins University as an undergraduate, and also attended Johns Hopkins Medical School and University of Michigan Medical School. In many episodes, House claims he is not a believer of God, which conflicts with many religious patients he has encountered (Fox). House reveals these personal beliefs to his patients in numerous circumstances because he has a strong hold of science as the answer and not the prayers. This idea runs parallel with Vincanne Adams’ point that “if villagers continue to see disease in a non-scientific, nonsensical way – that is, as a result of spirit attack, evil eye, loss of soul – then health will never be achieved. Ignorance is the real cause of disease” (Adams 44). House consistently works to eliminate this ignorance from the patient and tries to break it down to the patient at the physiological and scientific level.

                As a well-recognized diagnostician, House approaches medical cases utilizing as many resources at his disposal. You can see in the video in multiple occasions where he is examining x-rays, conversing with patients near the magnetic resonance imaging machine, and recording symptoms and data (i.e. starting at 2:13) to help him brainstorm for solutions. This kind of work and devotion to a patient’s case is a big factor to House’s success at solving patients’ illnesses according to Adams; she states that “the language of evidence-based science, randomization, controls, and robust statistical analysis is seen as a language that will provide new information that was not already “commonsense” (Adams 51). An ordinary physician might not have all these useful tools by their side, which could also be why an ordinary physician might not have the capacity to solve these distinct, ambiguous, and mysterious medical cases. This could relate to global health because the foreign aspect of the emerging diseases could be as dissimilar of a case to the specialist at work as would a unique case would be to Dr. House. Being able to approach cases with “evidence-based science” could help eliminate the strange or unfamiliar picture of the situation.

                So knowing that House is a highly regarded doctor, and that Good claims that great doctors “[condense] two central symbols – ‘competence’ and ‘caring’” (Good 91) in contemporary American medicine, let us look at how House works in the video with his patients. We will assume that competence is clearly a given since he works at the Head of the Diagnostics Department at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Without a high level of competence, it’s difficult to get a job at that rank. As far as “caring” goes, in the compilation of clips we see House (almost violently) stabbing patients with needles, flicking at or poking their faces, showing disinterest in the clinic (0:45),  and rolling eyes. House doesn’t have the orthodox persona that is obtained from the first two years of Harvard Medical School, yet he has a different “care-free” attitude towards his patients that makes it seem like he is dehumanizing them. It’s evident in the video that while he treats the patients themselves as “machines,” he is always working hard and putting time into brainstorming ways to help the patient. So, could that be a sign of a form of caring? We don’t necessarily see Good’s basic form, described as “a language of relationships, of attitudes and emotions, and of innate qualities of persons; it is a nontechnical, commonsense language of interpersonal engagement, not a language of knowledge and facts” (Good 93). In the video, I rarely see interpersonal engagement between House and his patients. Does this mean he doesn’t care? He offers no exchange of emotion with his patients other than sarcasm and disinterest. Does this mean he doesn’t care?

If we expect doctors to be competent and caring, why would Dr. House be so highly regarded as one of the best doctors when he hardly shows any upfront display of care? Perhaps patients see doctors as experts of human body machine, which could be why we subconsciously accept the lack of “care” despite asking for it.

Byron J. Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good. 1993. “’Learning Medicine’: The Constructing of Medical Knowledge at Harvard Medical School.” Pp. 81-107. In Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life. Edited by Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock. Berkeley: University of California Press.

House MD - Is There a Doctor in the House ? Dir. NCISmelanie. Perf. Hugh Laurie. Fox. YouTube. 5 July 2009. Web. 21 Jan. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-supp7Ow9o>.

"FOX Broadcasting Company - House TV Show - House TV Series - House Episode Guide." FOX Broadcasting Company - FOX Television Shows. Web. 21 Jan. 2011. http://www.fox.com/house/about/.

Vincanne, Adams. . “Against Global Health? Arbitrating Science, Non-Science, and Nonsense through Health.” In Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality. Edited by Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland. Pp. 40-58. New York: New York University Press.

GO SPERM GO!

Emily Martin’s The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles is an article that was written to describe the subliminal imposition of gendered stereotyped that hide behind the material taught and presented by scientists cited from the 1940’s to the 1980’s. This piece was written with a fairly feministic approach to the issue which is important to consider especially at a time in the early 1990’s when feminism was part of a growing trend and any form of signifying male dominance intentionally or abstractly would have been highlighted to have been recognized. Back in the 1980’s and prior, very numerous amounts of textbooks and articles depicted egg and sperm fertilization with assigned gender roles, each respectively to their gender. It’s substantial to understand what some of the analyses were that Emliy Martin made in order to relate them to how they fit in present day context.

Martin’s article was written as a message so that her readers know “one clear feminist challenge is to wake up sleeping metaphors in science” (501). Although the examples that are being analyzed are not quite “sleeping metaphors,” they exhibit the exaggerated reality behind Martin’s proposed analysis behind how fertilization in the course of biology was being taught. One of the common descriptions of the egg that Martin found had to do with the lack of activity.

In this cartoon drawing of the semen and egg, you see several identical figures (the sperm) surrounding the stationed egg in the middle. The sperm are all saying things that a stereotypical male would often use to flatter a female. The egg is thus automatically gendered a female based on being on the receiving end of the remarks by the sperm. You can see it also large curvy lips, a cup with an umbrella, and a cigarette held with the palm out; all feminine features that are assigned to the egg. In this drawing, the sperm seem to be doing “all the work” by trying to impress or “get” the egg, while the egg is simply just (what appears to be) sitting there and doing nothing except drink and smoke. This description could be  related to how the egg was illustrated to be almost dormant and lazy, like “Sleeping Beauty: a bride awaiting her mate’s magic kiss, which instills the spirit that brings her to life” (490).  The cartoon shows how the egg can be passive and unexciting as the sperm.

Here we see another gendered illustration of the sperm, but not quite so much of the egg. The sperm that is seen ahead of the rest of the pack is labeled as Michael Phelps, who is a male Olympic swimmer with a record number of gold medals. The race for the sperm to meet with the egg is like a competition for the male gametes. In Emily Martin’s chapter, she mentions how authors of other textbooks would label sperm as warriors and constantly fighting through the journey into the fallopian tube with “a velocity that is often remarked upon” (489). She mentions how sperm are designed by authors to have so much power in their tail (or flagellum) to help them swim and navigate their way to the target. By labeling the first sperm as “Michael Phelps,” not only is the sperm being gendered, it is also supporting the notion that sperm are the exciting piece to fertilization and that all the hard work and dependence falls on the sperm its “mission.” The egg in this cartoon isn’t given a role or a label, it just simply sits there as the target for the Michael Phelps sperm.

In this last example, we see a zoomed in cartoon of two groups of sperm battling it out right by the female egg. The sperm are given masculine characteristics with the depiction of anger, teeth bearing, moustaches, and weapons. This illustration, just like the one above is an exaggeration of the competition that goes on between the individual sperm. The sperm are given titles of warriors that are fighting for the chance to fertilize or “rescue the egg.” It seems like a commonality in other cartoons for sperm to be fighting against each other, with the winner being seen as the “hero.” Once again, the egg drawn in this cartoon is not given a label or a relatively exciting role. It’s just a yolk-like circle that is drawn to emphasize the relevance of the fighting sperm. The sperm are featured as the focal point of the picture, with the egg resting far up top. This depiction supports Martin’s that the female gamete receives less of an exciting or valued role in the process of fertilization. It’s very difficult today to find a textbook which shows this type of stereotypical bias, but the humorous representations in forms of cartoons could be the signs of the historical existence of the gendering in fertilization.

Works Cited:

Love, Jason. "Sperm Egg Cartoon Illustration Blowup." CartoonStock - Cartoon Pictures, Political Cartoons, Animations. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. http://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?start=2&search=main&catref=jlvn108&MA_Artist=&MA_Category=&ANDkeyword=sperm egg&ORkeyword=&TITLEkeyword=&NEGATIVEkeyword=.

Onorato, Rick. "Cum Ons." Flickr. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. http://www.flickr.com/photos/27648211@N05/2748335526.

Thecoolestimage. Michael Phelps Sperm Egg Cartoon Funny Picture by Thecoolestimages - Photobucket. Digital image. Photobucket. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. <http://s673.photobucket.com/albums/vv98/thecoolestimages/?action=view¤t=michaelphelpsspermegg.jpg&newest=1>.