English
786), the minis¬ terial family of Barmek engaged Hindu scholars to come to Bagdad, made [40j HINDU MEDICINE them chief physicians of their hospitals, and ordered them to translate from Sanscrit to Arabic, books on medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, philosophy, astrology, and other subjects. Manka, a Hindu, was a personal physician to the Caliph, cured him of a dangerous illness, and translated a work on poison by Charaka from Sanscrit to - Persian. What India contributed reached Bag¬ dad either directly in translations from the Sanscrit or indirectly from Sanscrit into Persian, and from thence into Arabic. 31 In treating by leeches, Avicenna gives nearly the very words of Susruta, and the name of Charaka repeatedly occurs in Latin translations of Avicenna, Rhazes, and Serapion. So that, as Sir William Hunter says, " The Hindu medicine is an independent development. Arab medicine was founded on the translations from the Sanscrit treatises, and European medi¬ cine down to the seventeenth century upon the Latin versions of Arabian medicine.” [4i] THE ANTIQUITY OF 1 Conclusion. In this brief survey of the history of Hindu medicine, we have roughly traversed from 4000 b.c. to a.d. 1600— a period of 5,600 years. The researches of modem Sanscrit scholarship have confirmed the old belief that India presents a history running back to antiquity, and has been the cradle of Aryan civilisation. Her medicine is as old as her civilisation and com¬ merce. Her people worked out, among other things, the atomic theory, the evolution theory, the theory of motion, of gravity, of sound, of light and heat potential, the presence of ether, the diurnal motion of the earth, the principle of differential calculus, the calculation of lunar periods and eclipses, the humoral theory, and the circulation of blood, centuries before they became known' to Europe. They were the inventors of numerical and decimal symbols, of mathematics and algebra, of chess and fables now used all over the world. [ 42 ] HINDU MEDICINE They were the first to practise dissection of the human body, first to provide dispensaries and hospitals for men and animals, first to employ minerals and mercury internally, first to intro¬ duce skin-grafting and plastic surgery, cataract-crouching, and major opera¬ tions like amputation, lithotomy, Cfes- arean section, etc. Their humoral theory, though misunderstood, domi¬ nated Greek, Roman, and Arabian medicine, and in Europe down to the eighteenth century. Many of their medicinal plants and drugs, spices and aromatics, have been incorporated in the materia medica of almost every nation. In fact, the influence of the medical works of the Hindus, their materia medica and plastic surgery, etc., can be detected in the Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Arabic, Chinese and Tibetan, and even in modem European medicine. 32 To the study of disease and its treatment, of chemistry and surgery, of materia medica and therapeutics, they brought [ 43 ] THE ANTIQUITY OF an acute mind and observation and an originality all their own. They early taught Europe when they gave Datura stramonium in asthma, cowitch in worms, nux vomica in parafysis and dyspepsia, arsenic in intermittent fevers, mercury in syphilis, salt-free diet in Bright’s disease, flesh and fatty foods in consumption, and mild pur¬ gatives in the first stages of dysentery. They seem to have known all about auto-intoxication ( samata) when they began the treatment of almost every disease by first attending to the bowels, and starved to some extent their fever patients. 38 They were early acquainted with some of the modem branches of medicine, such as hypnotism, hjrgiene, eugenics, massage, postural treatment, organo-therapy. Hypnotism originated among the Hindus, who took their sick people to their temples, to be cured by hypnotic suggestion, or temple-sleep, as was done in Egypt and Greece in later times. Manu, the ancient law-giver, was a sanitarian, biologist, and eugenist. [ 44 ] - HINDU MEDICINE He forbade marriage of an Aryan with a non-Aryan, because the latter was considered to be inferior in physical, intellectual, and moral qualities. A modem eugenist can go no further than Vasistha, a Vedic sage and an¬ other ancient law-giver, when, advising the desirability of marrying a bride from a good family, he says: " Even a horse is respected on account of his good genealogy, hence a lady of good genealogy should be taken into marriage.” 37 The caste system is really at first aimed at the preservation and perfection of race culture rather than the division of labour. It was Patan- jali who, in his Yoga sutras, prescribes various Asanas, or postures, for prevent¬ ing and curing diseases. When the Hindus included in their pharmacopeia such things as fat, bile, bone marrow, blood, flesh, hoof, etc., they early anticipated the therapeutics of the present day which prescribes cod-liver oil, ox gall, bone marrow, haemoglobin preparations, raw meat, and calf’s- E 45 ] THE ANTIQUITY OF foot jelly. So also their methods (as described in jRasayana and Vajikarana) of improving the virile power of gener¬ ative organs, which, they say, contain a vital fluid necessary for the preser¬ vation of the health of the body, to ward off disease and age, and to restore vigour and immunity—which reminds one of Brown-Sequard’s experiments with testicular extracts. They showed they were not blind to contagion when they forbade wearing the shoes, clothes, and garlands used by others, or drink¬ ing from the same vessel as others. When we add to these their knowledge of anaesthetics and the germ theory, we cannot but exclaim that there is nothing new under the sun. Greek and Hindu Medicine. European, scholars, finding a simi¬ larity between the Greek and Hindu medicine, have raised a doubt as to the originality of the Hindus, just as [ 4 < 3 ] HINDU MEDICINE Cantor, the historian of mathematics, struck with the resemblance between Greek geometry and the Sulva sutras, concluded that Hindus were influenced by the Alexandrian school of Hero. The Sulva sutras, however, date from about the eighth century b.c., while the school of Hero was 215 b.c., nearly six centuries later. While about 1200 b.c. Kanada propounded his atomic theory that heat and light are different manifestations of the same substance, Democritus explained his atomic theory in 460-360 b.c. {Modern Review, November, 1909, p. 448). So also in medicine the Hindus, as Colebrooke 38 says, were teachers and not learners. For instance, the theory of humoral pathology was shared by both the nations, and M. Lietard very justly observes that if it could be proved that the doctrine of humoral pathology was broached in India anterior to the time of Hip¬ pocrates, not only would the originality of the Hindus be established, but that [ 47 ] THE ANTIQUITY OF of the Greeks would be compromised thereby. 38 As has already been shown, it was known to the Hindus at the time of the Rig Veda, at least 2000 b.c. — i.e., many centuries before the birth of Hippocrates, So also the elemental theory of the Hindus and their physio¬ logical theory that the same principles which sustain life and the organism are transformed into the dynamics of disease were echoed by Hippocrates many centuries after. Royle has found . beyond doubt the indebtedness of the , Greeks and the Arabians to the Hindus. ' Even in the earliest of the Greek writers Indian drugs are mentioned by cor¬ rupted Sanscrit names. Many medi¬ cines produced in India were used by the early Greek physicians, whereas Indian medical treatises do not contain a single technical term which points to a foreign origin. So that an im¬ partial scholar cannot but agree with Neuberger 40 when he says that “ the trend of opinion today, informed by : recent discoveries, is in favour of the [48] HINDU MEDICINE originality of Indian medicine in its most salient features.” Lastly, the secret of their splendid civilisation, their penetrating know¬ ledge, their widespread influence among the nations of the world, lies in their grasp of the central fact that man is a spiritual being. Hence they subor¬ dinated their science and commerce, their social and industrial life, to that supreme factor. They commenced their daily life, the physicians visited their patients and performed operations, by first invoking Divine aid and bless¬ ing. Their spiritual culture, together with their social organisation and their asceticism in the midst of luxury and plenty, gave them a stability and a] vitality which outlived the clash of empires and the storms of foreign; conquest. The ideal of the Hindu physician was to save humanity re¬ gardless of earthly gain, as expressed by the great Charaka: "Not for self—not; for the fulfilment of any earthly desire of gain, but solely for the good of [491 HINDU MEDICINE suffering humanity, should you treat your patients, and so excel all. Those who sell the treatment of disease as merchandise gather the dust and neglect the gold.” They argued from the inner to the -outer, and relied upon natural means of cure more than artificial aids and helps. They arrived at conclusions such as the doctrine of evolution, from introspective reflection and mental vision, rather than by the toilsome researches of the laboratory. To them the material was the may a (illusion), and the spiritual was the real. And in that reality they saw further and deeper, and achieved more than it would have been possible for the West. REFERENCES 1 History of Medicine , by T. A. Wise, voi. i., introduction, p, lviii. 2 Orion, or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas, by B. G. Tilak.