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1As a system of cure, Charaka is still regarded to be of very high authority. That system is professed and practised by a very large number of persons in India, and if it were all empiricism and quackery, it could never have survived so many centuries. The effects of medical treatment are visible and addressed to the commonest understanding. Real quackery in the treatment of disease and human suffering has very little chance of going undetected. Many persons who have enquired into the matter, without yielding to the prejudices fostered by Western culture, are of opinion that many diseases peculiar to India can be cured more effectually, cheaply, and quickly, by the aid of the intelligent native practitioner relying on Charaka than by pursuing Western systems of cure. The following pages will discover many excellent recipes for the treatment of fever and some of the diseases peculiar to India. Although no febrifuge specific like cinchona was known to the physicians of ancient and mediaeval India, yet the following verse, from Chakrapanidatta, the well-known commentator of Charaka, [ V ] shows that the treatment of fever was, with us, as rational as that laid down in any modern medical work : — “ Fast, fomentation,* time, gruel of barley, and decoctions of bitters, destroy all disorders and functional derangements in acute fever.”
2Apart from the physical means recommended for the cure of febrile distempers, that which deserves especial attention in the above list is the mention of time as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of disease. There is a tendency in modern systems of cure to totally overlook the action of time. The physician who disregards the healing virtue of time and seeks to force nature by the action of his drugs can never command success. In India, however, in the treatment of almost every disease, the therapeutic virtues of time have been recognised from remote ages. Without citing additional instances, it may be safely said that the reader of the following pages will find, almost at every step, something to learn or admire. While introducing his work entitled “ Commentary on the Hindu system of Medicine,” in I845, Dr. T. A. Wise, of the Bengal Medical Service, observed, “ an accomplished scholar had indeed given an interesting account of Hindu opinions regarding certain diseases ;+ a persevering traveller had afforded a sketch of certain opinions contained in the Hindu medical Shastras, as translated into the Tibetan language ;% an antiquarian and a distinguished physician had given some of their peculiar opinions, as found in the medical works of the south of India ;$ and an able lecturer had combined all this information with important additions of his own; || but a comprehensive view of their system of medicine, which it is the intention of the present work to supply, is still wanting to complete our information on the subject.” I have no desire to underrate the labours of Dr. Wise. On the other hand, every Hindu and every student of the history of Medicine ought to be grateful to him for his labours in compiling within a
3* The word Swedanam in the original includes warm-water baths, vapour baths, and hot cataplasms of medicinal plants, besides fomentation by the frequent applica¬ tion of a heated cloth or a bag filled with heated sand or salt. t Professor Wilson, Tran. Med. and Phy. Society Calcutta, Vol. I., Oriental Magazine for March, 1823. f Mr. A. Soma de Koros, Journal Asiatic Society, Calcutta; No. 37, January, 1835. $ Dr. Heyne’s Tracts on India, and Ainslie’s Meteria Medica Indica, Lond. |] Dr. Royle on the Antiquity of Hindu Medicine, 1838. [ Vi ] convenient compass what he regarded the best things in Hindu medical literature. Unfortunately, Dr. Wise had, in a very large measure, to depend on others for his knowledge of the contents of that literature. His work, therefore, however valuable in other respects, contained some errors. Even as a general exposition of the Hindu system of medicine, it is certainly defective, in consequence of much that is valuable in that system having been entirely omitted. At any rate, the existence of Dr. Wise’s work, supposing it to even accurately represent the state of Sanskrit scholarship as it was in 1845, can by no means be regarded to ha-ve dispensed with the necessity of a complete translation into English of a work like Charaka.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1As a system of cure, Charaka is still regarded to be of very high authority. That system is professed and practised by a very large number of persons in India, and if it were all empiricism and quackery, it could never have survived so many centuries. The effects of medical treatment are visible and addressed to the commonest understanding. Real quackery in the treatment of disease and human suffering has very little chance of going undetected. Many persons who have enquired into the matter, without yielding to the prejudices fostered by Western culture, are of opinion that many diseases peculiar to India can be cured more effectually, cheaply, and quickly, by the aid of the intelligent native practitioner relying on Charaka than by pursuing Western systems of cure. The following pages will discover many excellent recipes for the treatment of fever and some of the diseases peculiar to India. Although no febrifuge specific like cinchona was known to the physicians of ancient and mediaeval India, yet the following verse, from Chakrapanidatta, the well-known commentator of Charaka, [ V ] shows that the treatment of fever was, with us, as rational as that laid down in any modern medical work : — “ Fast, fomentation,* time, gruel of barley, and decoctions of bitters, destroy all disorders and functional derangements in acute fever.”
2Apart from the physical means recommended for the cure of febrile distempers, that which deserves especial attention in the above list is the mention of time as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of disease. There is a tendency in modern systems of cure to totally overlook the action of time. The physician who disregards the healing virtue of time and seeks to force nature by the action of his drugs can never command success. In India, however, in the treatment of almost every disease, the therapeutic virtues of time have been recognised from remote ages. Without citing additional instances, it may be safely said that the reader of the following pages will find, almost at every step, something to learn or admire. While introducing his work entitled “ Commentary on the Hindu system of Medicine,” in I845, Dr. T. A. Wise, of the Bengal Medical Service, observed, “ an accomplished scholar had indeed given an interesting account of Hindu opinions regarding certain diseases ;+ a persevering traveller had afforded a sketch of certain opinions contained in the Hindu medical Shastras, as translated into the Tibetan language ;% an antiquarian and a distinguished physician had given some of their peculiar opinions, as found in the medical works of the south of India ;$ and an able lecturer had combined all this information with important additions of his own; || but a comprehensive view of their system of medicine, which it is the intention of the present work to supply, is still wanting to complete our information on the subject.” I have no desire to underrate the labours of Dr. Wise. On the other hand, every Hindu and every student of the history of Medicine ought to be grateful to him for his labours in compiling within a
3* The word Swedanam in the original includes warm-water baths, vapour baths, and hot cataplasms of medicinal plants, besides fomentation by the frequent applica¬ tion of a heated cloth or a bag filled with heated sand or salt. t Professor Wilson, Tran. Med. and Phy. Society Calcutta, Vol. I., Oriental Magazine for March, 1823. f Mr. A. Soma de Koros, Journal Asiatic Society, Calcutta; No. 37, January, 1835. $ Dr. Heyne’s Tracts on India, and Ainslie’s Meteria Medica Indica, Lond. |] Dr. Royle on the Antiquity of Hindu Medicine, 1838. [ Vi ] convenient compass what he regarded the best things in Hindu medical literature. Unfortunately, Dr. Wise had, in a very large measure, to depend on others for his knowledge of the contents of that literature. His work, therefore, however valuable in other respects, contained some errors. Even as a general exposition of the Hindu system of medicine, it is certainly defective, in consequence of much that is valuable in that system having been entirely omitted. At any rate, the existence of Dr. Wise’s work, supposing it to even accurately represent the state of Sanskrit scholarship as it was in 1845, can by no means be regarded to ha-ve dispensed with the necessity of a complete translation into English of a work like Charaka.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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