ABSTRACT
It only takes a glance through the Urdu women’s journal, Zil us-sultan, published in Bhopal from 1913, to recognize Muslim women’s preoccupation with health issues in early twentieth-century India. In one edition in 1918, there were a number of features relating to yunani tibb, including a review of a book by a yunani practitioner, or hakim, from Kanpur, who was recommended for writing in the style of physicians from Bhopal and Lucknow, as well as a regular column detailing simple remedies that could be applied in the home. The advertisements are also revealing in that they promoted the use of patent medicines from a yunani pharmacy established in Delhi in 1910 as an adjunct to the Sharifi family’s Madrasa-i-tibbiya, namely, the Hindustani Dawakhana, as well as a peppermint mixture to clear ear blockages that was peddled by a “famous” physician from Calcutta, Dr S.K. Burman.1 Other issues of the journal included columns on “some tested prescriptions” and “a few more cures” that offered home treatments for anything from a honeybee sting and a lack of appetite to coughs, colds, and fevers.2 The ruling Begam and her daughter-in-law, Maimoona Sultan, too, published practical health guides that included scientific drawings of human anatomy and home remedies for illnesses and accidents, while, at the ladies’ club in Bhopal, speeches on health and hygiene were a regular feature of normal meetings and gala celebrations alike.3 Clearly, health – or the lack of it – was a matter of special concern to women.
