Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay, The Unsung Indian-Bengali Hero

India is the brain hub of the world’s scientific research. When it comes to Indian science, how can one forget the contributions of Bengal, and Kolkata? If you calculate the number of Nobel prize winners from India, you will find an astounding majority of them are connected to Kolkata. Dr. CV Raman was highly connected to the Indian Association of Cultivation of Science [IACS], Kolkata where he did the major work which brought him the Nobel Prize in 1930.[1,2] In 1917, he was appointed to the Palit chair of physics at Raza bazar Science College, University of Calcutta.[1] Yet surprisingly, many researchers in Bengal were unrecognized and didn’t receive their deserved fame. Their work sang but they were unsung. In this editorial, we try to know about one such legendary Indian Physician-Doctor who hadn’t received the proper recognition he deserved. Dr. Subhash Mukhopadhyay was an extraordinary Indian Physician Researcher who was born on 16th January 1931 in Hazaribagh, India [3]. At the University of Edinburgh, he did an extraordinary work on hormones. Title of his thesis was, “Some Observations on The Biological Assay of Gonadotropic Hormones”. You can read the full thesis PDF from the following link present at Archives of University of Edinburgh,[4]. Before him, there was no great way to detect the levels of this hormone, but his remarkable work in this field opened many avenues for which he also received his second PhD. He is famous for India’s first and world’s second In Vitro Fertilization [IVF] work.

A Holistic Approach to Mental and Physical Well-Being

A major goal of mankind since ages has been to seek liberation from suffering, both physical and mental. Ancient Indian physician and scholar Charaka emphasized positive mental health when he articulated that the task of medicine is not simply to strive for absence of disease but to enable an individual to learn about and lead ideal life. Recent trends in the field of psychology have major developments in the field of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. The methods used to heal patients both physically and psychologically are increasingly holistic in their approaches. Research suggests that holistic techniques used to reduce stress, anxiety and depression are being utilized by patients and clients more and more and subsequently replacing what used to be the authority of pharmaceutical remedies. According to a study done by the Samueli Institute in Alexandria, Virginia, the United States has shown a marked increase in the use of methods such as hypnosis, yoga, relaxation exercise, acupressure, affirmations, reiki, meditation, spiritual healing and energy healing. Taking a holistic approach to healing means consider all realms of existence, not just the physical body. The objective of present article is to create an awareness of the benefits of holistic approach and achieving dramatic changes in physical, emotional and behavioural health.

Islam and Buddhism: The Arabian Prequel?

Conventionally, the first Muslim-Buddhist encounters are thought to have taken place in the context of the Arab-Muslim expansions into eastern Iran in the mid-seventh century, the conquest of Sind in 711 and the rise of the Islamic empire. However, several theories promoted in academic and popular circles claim that Buddhists or other Indians were present in western Arabia at the eve of Islam and thus shaped the religious environment in which Muhammad’s movement emerged. This article offers a critical survey of the most prominent arguments adduced to support this view and discusses the underlying attitudes to the Islamic tradition, understood as a body of ideas and practices, and Islamic Tradition, understood as a body of texts. Such theories appear to be radical challenges of the Islamic tradition insofar as they seek to reinscribe the presence of religious communities in conventional narratives of Islamic origins that do not acknowledge them. On the other hand, they often operate with an unreconstructed reliance upon the sources of the Islamic Tradition. The assessment focuses ondescriptions of the Ka’ba and objects associated with it as well as on a story about an Indian physician who diagnosed an illness of Muhammad’s wife Aisha. While Indian or Buddhist connections with western Arabia and early Islam do not appear to be entirely impossible, the evidence does not amount to a persuasive case for the early seventh century.

In silico documentation of medicinal plants in Lacchiwala range, Dehradun forest division, Uttarakhand (India)

The Himalaya is the treasure house of natural wealth, particularly of medicinal plants. The drugs from different plant species have been known to the Indian physician since long - long ago. A number of important herbal preparations are described in the Indian system of medicine i.e. the Ayurveda. Ayurveda has described in its text more than three thousand herbs and quite a large number of them are found in the Himalaya. The study of the intrinsic relationship of the Homo sapiens to plants, form the subject matter of Ethnobotany; if one goes carefully through the science of Ayurveda, in one perspective, one would find exactly a similar relationship between man and medicinal plants

Chinese Medicinal Excrement

The use of medicinal excrement, of which there is some evidence under the Han, increased significantly in the Tang Dynasty. Many recipes, recorded in the Dunhuang manuscripts and in scholarly literature, are based on animal excrement. First, we want to show that this increase is due to the influence of foreign medicines, mainly Āyurvedic medicine and, second, that Buddhism played a key role in this development. By comparing Indian medical sources, Chinese manuscripts from Dunhuang (which was a privileged site for the transfer of knowledge), Chinese texts of scholarly literature, and Buddhist sources, the role of Buddhism in spreading the use of medical excrement can be observed. Buddhism first exerted an ethical influence through the idea of compassion for beings suffering from illness, which then led to the search for first-aid remedies that were cheap and easy to procure, especially in the natural environment, such as the feces of domestic animals. The notion was then conveyed that, beyond the tension between pure and filthy, no remedy is vile and every substance can be a remedy, an idea that can be traced back to Āyurvedic medicine and that is embedded in the story of the model Indian physician, Jīvaka. Finally, the circulation and distribution of animal fecal recipes (here we have taken the example of cow dung) follows the passage of Buddhism from India to China as does the dissemination of such remedies. Thus, we show that Buddhism was a catalyst and a vector for the transmission and transfer of knowledge on medicinal excrement.