Charaka-Samhita — trans. Kaviraj Avinash Chandra Kaviratna

After this, the drinking of astringent decoctions, rubbing of (medi¬ cated) oils, drinking of medicated: oils and ghees,, application of vapours and heat (in the various ways already indicated), application of plasters, bathing the body or sprinkling hot or cold water over it, the use of unguents, administration of emetics or of purgatives, the use of enemata either dry or oily, the use of alleviative or curative medica¬ ments, administration of errhines, fumigation (of clothes and beds and the sick-room), inhaling the smoke of medicaments, the use of collyrium, and the drinking of medicated milk, should be prescribed with discretion according to the nature of the fever, the temparament of the patient, season and place. 3&

In all mature fevers, the drinking is regarded as highly beneficial: of ghees, boiled with the particular medicines that are suitable to* them.

Ghees, in consequence of their oiliness, alleviate the (excited) wind. In consequence of their correction (by means of suitable drugs), they alleviate the (excited) phlegm.. In consequence, again, of their cooling properties they alleviate the (excited) bile and heat.

Hence, in all mature fevers, ghees are beneficial, even as water te things burning in a conflagration. 37

( Here are some verses }.

As men, desirous of extinguishing the flames, pour water upon a burning house, even so physicians administer ghee in mature fevers. 38,

In consequence of its oiliness it alleviates the (excited) wind ' of its cooling properties, it checks the (excited) bile : and though its quality is similar to that of phlegm, yet, in consequence of its cor¬ rection by particular drugs, it overcomes the (excited) phlegm also.* 39

* The quality of ghee by itself is similar to that of phlegm. Hence, if ghee be adminis¬ tered in cases of excited phlegm, it is sure to excite the phlegm still further, for ‘of all things, at all times, similarity is the cause of increase.’ ( Vide aphorism 43, Lesson I., Sutrasthana, ante.) In consequence, however, of ghee being boiled with particular drugs that are known to be alleviative of phlegm, such boiled ghee checks excited phlegm. The process of boiling ghee with particular drugs for adding some new properties to it and neutralising propertiesalready existing, is called ‘samskara’ or correction, — T.

CHARAKA-SAMHITA.

p. 943

No other oily substance admits so well of correction as gheer Hence, ghee is regarded as the foremost of all oily substances.* 4°

The repetition in verse of matter which has been already explained in prose, should not be taken as saying the same thing twice over and, therefore censurable ; for the repetition in verse is made simply to help the physician in his profession.! 41

( Here are some verses containing a summary.)

The three kinds of the causes of disease, together with the various names applied to cause, the five classes of disease, the synonyms of the word ‘gada’ or disease, as also of the word ‘lakshmana’ or symp¬ tom, the five methods by which disease may be diagnosed, the eight kinds of fever, the remote and immediate causes of fever, and the incubatory indications, in brief, of fever, — all these have been ex¬ pounded, in brief, at the outset of the Division, called Nidana, by the holy Punarvasu, who himself transcended fever of every kind, unto Agnive^a with head bent in reverence. *-3

Thus ends Lesson I, called ‘Jwara-nidana,’ in the Division called ‘Nidana,’ of Agnivega’s treatise as revised by Charaka,

LESSON II.

We shall now expound the causes of blood-bile!

Thus said the illustrious son of Atri. 1

We shall first explain what the conditions should be of the bile iii order that it might acquire the appellation of “blood-bile.”

* For the meaning of the word ‘correction’, vide note above, It is a technical word in Hindu Medicine. — T.

+ Verse is more easily remembered than prose. Hence the repetition, when it is prompted by the desire of enabling the physician (including students) to remember the matter easily, should not be regarded as censurable. The last half of the second line is read in some texts as ‘dwiruktam tanna garbate.’ The other reading is ‘dwiruktah sa na grihyale.’ — T.

+ ‘Rakta-plta’ is, literally, blood- bile. The bile, under certain circumstances, becoming excited, vitiates the blood and causes it to come out through the several outlets of the body. The disease called ‘Rakta-pitta’ is nothing else than hoemorrhage, which, according to Hindu physicians, is brought about by excited bile. — T.

p. 944

CHARAKA-SAMH1TA