Sources on Medicine in the Malay World

A large portion of our repository of Malay sources are these written manuscripts. The kitab tibb is named after Ibn Sina (Avicenna)'s well-respected and venerable al-Qanun fi al-Tibb (Canon of Medicine). Most of these manuscripts were published circa the 19th to 20th centuries by notable peoples spanning throughout Southeast Asia.

The Malay manuscripts are originally handwritten in the Jawi script, the writing system of the language then. They primarily discuss the treatment of a wide variety of diseases using a mixture of plant materials, sometimes alongside herbs and spices, what we would contemporarily refer to as traditional Malay medicine. The old documents arguably reflect modern practices of phytotherapy and herbalism providing recipes meant to cure diseases like fevers, constipation, skin disorders, and amenorrhea. Aside from physiological conditions, mental and psychological illnesses like anxiety and postpartum depression are often mentioned as well. More peculiar non-medical issues included in the manuscripts like improving one's libido and pacifying a crying child are discussed quite extensively as well.

This divergence from modern biomedicine is largely due to fact that the human body in traditional Malay medicine is believed to constitute the four elements: fire, earth, water, and air. The ‘soul’ or spiritual and emotional state of a person is emphasized and determines how susceptible one is to various illnesses. Hence, in terms of diagnosis, problems that elicit negative or less desirable emotional responses are considered to be something to be resolved or ‘cured’ from. Unsurprisingly, religion and divination are also heavily incorporated in some of the manuscripts as steps to recovery. Verses of the Holy Qur’an are used as incantations in azimat, charm-like objects believed to act as protection and ward off evil and bad luck, reflecting how Islamisation of daily practices had taken root in the region.

The raw manuscripts are archived in various overseas institutions, some of which are made readily available for open public access due to digitization efforts. The trawl of such documents means the need to narrow down our list of sources by focusing and selecting Malay manuscripts with information most relevant to the project's objectives. We do this by verifying their availability for digitization, analyzing their origin (location and date first published), and the types of diseases discussed (physiological, psychological, non-medicinal, etc.). We ensure that the selected manuscripts span across various parts of Southeast Asia. As these manuscripts are written in Jawi, the process of transliteration and transcription to Romanised Malay (Rumi) is a necessary step before the extraction of data.

Efforts to transliterate old Malay medicinal manuscripts have also been made by several publishing houses in Malaysia such as the government body Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM), Akademi Jawi Malaysia, and Baytul Hikma. These publications are also included in our research, in conjunction with the digitized manuscripts to get a comprehensive picture and more thorough investigation of traditional Malay medicinal practice integral to the project.