N. C. Paul (1829-1880) [1] was a 19th-century Bengali physician and scientist. He described studies of physiologic changes in persons performing yoga and introduced yoga to a wider Western audience.
Born Nobin Chunder Pal (also transcribed as Navina Chandra Pal, Nobin Chundra Pal, and Navina Candra Pala) he anglicized his name. Paul enrolled at the Bengal Medical College at Calcutta and graduated in 1841; [2] his name is often followed by G.B.M.C. to designate him as a graduate of the institution. Transferred to Benares (today Varanasi) he had a "commanding view of yogic life." [2] As a result of his observations and studies, he published Treatise on Yoga Philosophy, its first edition published in London in 1851 [2] (or 1850) [3] and a second edition in 1882.
Paul's book has been viewed as perhaps the first attempt to link yoga and modern scientific medicine. [2] [3] He defines yoga "as nothing more than prolonged sleep". [4] The treatise contains case studies of people who went into prolonged hibernation. Paul is the first to indicate that yoga induces hypercapnia. [2] He describes yoga positions and exercises for Raja and Hatha yoga and their benefits.
The world traveler and theosophist Helena Blavatsky came across the book, erroneously believing the author to be an English physician. She noted that one of his yoga acquaintances was Captain Seymour, an Englishman who became a yogi. She observed that "(t)he book produced a sensation among the representatives of medicine in India, and a lively polemic between Anglo-Indian and native journalists." [5]
Ibn Sina, also known as Abu Ali Sina, Pour Sina, and often known in the West as Avicenna, was a Persian polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age, and the father of early modern medicine. Sajjad H. Rizvi has called Avicenna "arguably the most influential philosopher of the pre-modern era". He was a Muslim Peripatetic philosopher influenced by Greek Aristotelian philosophy. Of the 450 works he is believed to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus, often Anglicized as Galen or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Considered to be one of the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity, Galen influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic.
Hippocrates of Kos, also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician of the Age of Pericles, who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is traditionally referred to as the "Father of Medicine" in recognition of his lasting contributions to the field, such as the use of prognosis and clinical observation, the systematic categorization of diseases, or the formulation of humoural theory. The Hippocratic school of medicine revolutionized ancient Greek medicine, establishing it as a discipline distinct from other fields with which it had traditionally been associated, thus establishing medicine as a profession.
Patañjali was a sage in ancient Tamilakam, thought to be the author of a number of Sanskrit and Tamil works. The greatest of these are the Yoga Sutras, a classical yoga text. There is doubt as to whether the sage Patañjali is the author of all the works attributed to him as there are a number of known historical authors of the same name. A great deal of scholarship has been devoted over the last century to the issue of the historicity or identity of this author or these authors.
Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines that originated in ancient India, aimed at controlling ('yoking') and stilling the mind, and recognizing the detached 'witness-consciousness' as untouched by the activities of the mind (Citta) and mundane suffering (Duḥkha). There are a broad variety of the schools of yoga, practices, and goals in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and traditional forms and modern methods of yoga are practiced worldwide.
Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī, 864 or 865 – 925 or 935 CE, was a Persian physician, philosopher and alchemist, widely considered one of the most important figures in the history of medicine. He also wrote on logic, astronomy and grammar.
Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-'Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-Ansari, popularly known as Al-Zahrawi (الزهراوي), Latinised as Abulcasis, was an Arab Andalusian physician, surgeon and chemist. Considered to be the greatest surgeon of the Middle Ages, he has been referred to as the "father of modern surgery".
Hunayn ibn Ishaq al-Ibadi (809–873) was an influential Arab Nestorian Christian translator, scholar, physician, and scientist. During the apex of the Islamic Abbasid era, he worked with a group of translators, among whom were Abū 'Uthmān al-Dimashqi, Ibn Mūsā al-Nawbakhti, and Thābit ibn Qurra, to translate books of philosophy and classical Greek and Persian texts into Arabic and Syriac. Ḥunayn ibn Isḥaq was the most productive translator of Greek medical and scientific treatises in his day. He studied Greek and became known among the Arabs as the "Sheikh of the translators". He is the father of Arab translations. He mastered four languages: Arabic, Syriac, Greek and Persian. Hunayn's method was widely followed by later translators. He was originally from al-Hira, the capital of a pre-Islamic cultured Arab kingdom, but he spent his working life in Baghdad, the center of the great ninth-century Greek-into-Arabic/Syriac translation movement. His fame went far beyond his own community.
Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, also known as Isaac Israeli the Elder and Isaac Judaeus, was one of the foremost Jewish physicians and philosophers living in the Arab world of his time. He is regarded as the father of medieval Jewish Neoplatonism. His works, all written in Arabic and subsequently translated into Hebrew, Latin and Spanish, entered the medical curriculum of the early thirteenth-century universities in Medieval Europe and remained popular throughout the Middle Ages.
Yoga as therapy is the use of yoga as exercise, consisting mainly of postures called asanas, as a gentle form of exercise and relaxation applied specifically with the intention of improving health. This form of yoga is widely practised in classes, and may involve meditation, imagery, breath work (pranayama) and calming music as well as postural yoga.
Ancient Greek medicine was a compilation of theories and practices that were constantly expanding through new ideologies and trials. Many components were considered in ancient Greek medicine, intertwining the spiritual with the physical. Specifically, the ancient Greeks believed health was affected by the humors, geographic location, social class, diet, trauma, beliefs, and mindset. Early on the ancient Greeks believed that illnesses were "divine punishments" and that healing was a "gift from the Gods". As trials continued wherein theories were tested against symptoms and results, the pure spiritual beliefs regarding "punishments" and "gifts" were replaced with a foundation based in the physical, i.e., cause and effect.
The Charaka Samhita is a Sanskrit text on Ayurveda. Along with the Sushruta Samhita, it is one of the two foundational texts of this field that have survived from ancient India. It is one of the three works that constitute the Brhat Trayi.
Medicine in ancient Rome combined various techniques using different tools, methodology, and ingredients. Ancient Roman medicine was highly influenced by Greek medicine but would ultimately have its own contribution to the history of medicine through past knowledge of the Hippocratic Corpus combined with use of the treatment of diet, regimen, along with surgical procedures. This was most notably seen through the works of two of the prominent Greek Physicians, including Dioscorides and Galen, who practiced medicine and recorded their discoveries in the Roman Empire. This is contrary to two other physicians like Soranus of Ephesus and Asclepiades of Bithynia who practiced medicine both in outside territories and in ancient Roman territory, subsequently. Dioscorides was a Roman army physician, Soranus was a representative for the Methodic school of medicine, Galen performed public demonstrations, and Asclepiades was a leading Roman physician. These four physicians all had knowledge of medicine, ailments, and treatments that were healing, long lasting and influential to human history.
Agni Yoga or the Living Ethics, or the Teaching of Life, is a Neo-Theosophical religious doctrine transmitted by Helena Roerich and Nicholas Roerich from 1920. The term Agni Yoga means "Mergence with Divine Fire" or "Path to Mergence with Divine Fire". This term was introduced by the Roerichs. The followers of Agni Yoga believe that the teaching was given to the Roerich family and their associates by Master Morya, the guru of the Roerichs and of Helena Blavatsky, one of the founders of the modern Theosophical movement and of the Theosophical Society.
Wei Yilin was a Chinese physician and surgeon who lived during the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty of China. He compiled the medical treatise Shiyi Dexiaofang and invented a suspension method for reducing dislocated joints and fractures.
Hinduism is regarded by modern Theosophy as one of the main sources of "esoteric wisdom" of the East. The Theosophical Society was created in a hope that Asian philosophical-religious ideas "could be integrated into a grand religious synthesis." Prof. Antoine Faivre wrote that "by its content and its inspiration" the Theosophical Society is greatly dependent on Eastern traditions, "especially Hindu; in this, it well reflects the cultural climate in which it was born." A Russian Indologist Alexander Senkevich noted that the concept of Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy was based on Hinduism. According to Encyclopedia of Hinduism, "Theosophy is basically a Western esoteric teaching, but it resonated with Hinduism at a variety of points."
Modern yoga is a wide range of practices with differing purposes, encompassing in its various forms yoga philosophy derived from the Vedas, physical postures derived from Hatha yoga, devotional and tantra-based practices, and Hindu nation-building approaches.
Joseph S. Alter is an American medical anthropologist known for his research into the modern practice of yoga as exercise, his 2004 book Yoga in Modern India, and the physical and medical culture of South Asia.
Yoga in the United States has a long history, foreshadowed in the 19th century by the philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose poem "Brahma" is a statement of the Hindu philosophy behind yoga, and Henry David Thoreau, and starting in earnest with the Hindu leader Vivekananda's visit from India in 1893; he presented yoga as a spiritual path without postures (asanas), very different from modern yoga as exercise. Two other early figures, however, the women's rights advocate Ida C. Craddock and the businessman and occultist Pierre Bernard, created their own interpretations of yoga, based on tantra and oriented to physical pleasure.
The science of yoga is the scientific basis of modern yoga as exercise in human sciences such as anatomy, physiology, and psychology. Yoga's effects are to some extent shared with other forms of exercise, though it differs in the amount of stretching involved, and because of its frequent use of long holds and relaxation, in its ability to reduce stress. Yoga is here treated separately from meditation, which has effects of its own, though yoga and meditation are combined in some schools of yoga.