168 chapter
shivering. [.. .] In the case of allopathic doctors, after asking two or three
questions, they will know which medicine to prescribe. But ayurvedic doctors,
they want to take the patient to another level. At that level, things are very dif-
ferent. Right now I am taking treatment for mental illness. For this illness, there
is a painful method. It is giving electric “shock”s. After going there [allopathy]
and coming here [ayurveda], I feel this is better.One sees in this excerpt frequently-heard complaints about uncomfortable
eff ects of medications and electroconvulsive therapy in allopathic psychiatry.
Ajit says injections of medications caused him to start shivering, and he
describes “electric shocks” as a “painful method” of treatment. Th is passage also
contains an enthusiastic evaluation of ayurvedic care. Some patients undergo-
ing treatment that involved what I call a pleasant process also enthusiastically
described their treatment not only as a way of getting rid of a problem but
also as a means of transformation—or, as Ajit put it, bringing one to “another
level.” Th is is not to imply that patients did not see benefi ts to allopathic care.
Allopathy has its own virtues—such as obtaining fast results as we shall see
later—but these did not include pleasant or “cooling” experiences or the pos-
sibility of achieving “another level” of health.
Reactions to Electroconvulsive Therapy and Talapodichil
Working just South of Kerala in Sri Lanka, Nichter and Nordstrom (1989)
observed that people perceive allopathy as a powerful and “heating” medicine
that can give quick relief but can also cause serious side eff ects:
Allopathic medicines are spoken of as “shocking” the body and causing side
eff ects which may prove as troublesome as those symptoms originally prompting
one to seek treatment (Nichter and Nordstrom 1989: 374).Th e illustrations that follow reveal a situation where shocking the body
is more than a metaphor for allopathic treatment. A comparison of patient
reactions to the allopathic inpatient psychiatric procedure electroconvulsive
therapy and the ayurvedic inpatient psychiatric procedure known as talapodi-
chil reveals how a powerful and “shocking” therapy feels and demonstrates
the importance of a pleasant process of treatment for people undergoing
therapy.
Electroconvulsive therapy (or ECT—also known as “shock therapy” or
“electroshock therapy”) involves sending an electrical current through a
patient’s body at a level high enough to cause a seizure. Th is procedure is used