60 chapter
practices. In nineteenth-century Travancore, the colonial-era princely state
that later became part of the state of Kerala, Western medical practices had the
support of the Travancore royal family, whose members used Western medi-
cine and promoted allopathically based public health programs (Nair 2001;
Desai 2005: 468–469). In the early twentieth century, public health programs
in Travancore received further support from the Rockefeller Foundation
(Nair 2001: 222). As in Bengal, promoters of Western medicine in Travancore
encountered local medical practices including ayurveda, siddha and unani,
among which “Ayurveda was the most organized and systematized branch of
medical knowledge” (226).
It is diffi cult to date the origins of ayurveda in Travancore and the Malabar
Coast, but one study cites evidence of something like ayurveda in this area in
the earliest centuries of the fi rst millenium, while tenth-century inscriptions
indicate the existence of native, hospital-like institutions attached to Hindu
temples (Devi 2006: 73). With the Travancore royal family, missionaries and
the colonial state abetting the ascendancy of Western medicine, ayurveda lost
its dominance as the most established form of medicine sometime around the
late nineteenth century (Nair 2001: 226). In an eff ort to reinvigorate ayurveda
at the turn of the twentieth century, the Travancore government created a
Department of Ayurveda and founded ayurvedic medical schools (Nair 2001:
227). Th us, from the 1890s to the present, the local governments in Kerala/
Travancore have supported both ayurvedic and allopathic institutions; later
but to a lesser degree, the local governments also endorsed the practitioners
of homeopathy, a medical system that originated in Germany and became
popular in South India. Private ayurvedic schools and pharmaceutical produ-
cers, such as the Arya Vaidya Sala corporation, were also involved in eff orts to
reinvigorate ayurveda in the early twentieth century (Varier 1996).
Th e promotion of Western medicine in princely Travancore included treat-
ments for mental illness. Founded in 1870 in Trivandrum, the Peroorkada
Mental Health Centre continues to operate as one of Kerala’s largest mental
hospitals, and was one of the primary allopathic research sites in this study. Th e
practice of clinical psychology in Kerala was initiated in the 1950s by a Keralite,
Dr. V. K. Alexander, who did his training at Princeton University in the United
States and trained the fi rst Ph.D. in clinical psychology in Kerala, awarded
in 1968 to Dr. R. Jagathambika who continues to have a thriving practice
near Cochin in the central part of the state. In the latter half of the twentieth
century, the availability of allopathic medicine was expanded throughout the
state by Kerala’s leftist governments, and as described in Chapter 1, people
in Kerala today have greater access to allopathic care than residents of other
Indian states.