[Tamil medicine and the perception of pietist missionaries of the Danish-Halle Tranquebar Mission in the 1st half of the 18th century].

Abstract

The cooperation between medical systems of different cultures is a widely discussed problem. In an historical example, the perception of Tamil medicine by the Pietist missionaries of the Danish-Halle Mission in the first half of the 18th century illustrated the different meaning assigned to diseases and cures as well as differences in medical treatments compared to European medicine. Published for over 60 years starting in 1708, the Halle Reports enable us to understand the changes and developments in the relationship between the European and Tamil cultures that met in Southern India. The entrance of the first-generation Pietist missionaries (until 1720) was clearly silhouetted against a behavior that was directed at suppressing the traditional and asserting the European forms of cultural practice. They developed forms of a partnership-like association which is still discernable in the edited reports. The encounter between the Pietist missionaries and Tamil culture can be characterized as both empirical and critically reflective thanks to excellent language skills and an open-minded perspective.