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Category
Disciplines in Medicine & Healing Traditions
Clinical medicine and public health alongside the functional, integrative, Chinese and Ayurvedic traditions.
Era
27 figures
Galen of Pergamon
129 – 216Physician to gladiators and emperors whose anatomy ruled medicine for 1,400 years.
Zhang Zhongjing
150 – 219Treatise on Cold Damage remains a foundation of Chinese medicine.
Al-Razi (Rhazes)
854 – 925Distinguished smallpox from measles and pioneered clinical case records.
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
980 – 1037Wrote the medical textbook that trained Europe's doctors until 1650.
Avicenna's student Al-Juzjani
980 – 1070Preserved and completed Ibn Sina's corpus.
Zhang Xichun
1860 – 1933First great synthesiser of Chinese and Western medicine; his case records still teach clinicians.
José Rizal
1861 – 1896Ophthalmologist whose novels ignited the Philippine revolution; executed at 35.
Hakim Ajmal Khan
1868 – 1927Physician of Unani medicine who built its modern colleges and led the Indian National Congress.
P. S. Varier
1869 – 1944Founded Arya Vaidya Sala at Kottakkal and industrialised classical Ayurvedic pharmacy.
Cheng Dan'an
1899 – 1957Rescued acupuncture from abolition and rebuilt it on anatomical terms with filiform needles.
Keisetsu Otsuka
1900 – 1980Revived Kampo in Japan and secured its place inside the national health insurance system.
Shiv Sharma
1906 – 1980Led the campaign that won Ayurveda statutory recognition in independent India.
Zhu Lian
1909 – 1978Wrote New Acupuncture (1951) and led the state institute that standardised the practice.
Yoshio Manaka
1911 – 1989Surgeon-acupuncturist who built a biophysical model of meridian therapy.
Deng Tietao
1916 – 2019Master physician of Guangzhou whose spleen-stomach theory shaped modern TCM curricula.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
1918 – 2008Exported Transcendental Meditation and revived classical Ayurveda as a global health programme.
B. K. S. Iyengar
1918 – 2014Turned yoga into a precise therapeutic method taught in clinics and studios worldwide.
Brihaspati Dev Triguna
1920 – 2013The century's most celebrated pulse diagnostician; chaired India's central Ayurvedic council.
Tenzin Choedrak
1922 – 2001Personal physician to the Dalai Lama who preserved Tibetan medicine through 17 years of imprisonment.
Michio Kushi
1926 – 2014Carried macrobiotics from postwar Japan to the West and into the diet-and-disease debate.
Tu Youyou
b. 1930Extracted artemisinin from ancient texts; millions of malaria deaths averted.
Daniel Kahneman
1934 – 2024Prospect theory founded behavioural economics and modern policy 'nudging'.
Ashok Vaidya
1940 – 2023Pioneer of reverse pharmacology, translating classical formulas into clinical trials.
Vasant Lad
b. 1943Founded the Ayurvedic Institute in New Mexico and trained the first Western practitioners.
Deepak Chopra
b. 1946Endocrinologist turned global voice of mind-body medicine; contested by clinical researchers.
Shinya Yamanaka
b. 1962Reprogrammed adult cells into stem cells, remaking regenerative medicine.
Baba Ramdev
b. 1965Made yoga and Ayurveda a mass movement and a corporate empire; repeatedly censured over health claims.