Charaka-Samhita — trans. Kaviraj Avinash Chandra Kaviratna

a yirulent poison may become an excellent medicine, while a medicine misapplied becomes a virulent poison. A thunderbolt falling upon the head may leave a hope of life, but a medicine prescribed by an ignorant person will not leave a patient a hope of life. It is better to drink the poison of a snake or the solution of copper, or swallow red hot balls of iron, than assume the garb of a learned man and take food and drink and money from one afflicted with diseases and sobering relief.”

The translation of this vast work into English will bring it before many who. previously had heard of it, but were unable to judge of.its merits. The book is of great importance both to Sanskrit scholars and to medical men who take an interest in the historical development of medicine, and we hope to lay before our readers, as the translation progresses, any points of special interest which it may contain.

( Medical Record, New Tori, October 15th 1892.)

Charaha-Samhita.— It may be that some readers are weary at times of the medicine of to-day, with its arid science, its disappointing art, and the politics of its prophylaxis. If so, we commend them to “ CharakaSamhita,” a treatise on Hindu medicine which has recently been put in English by Dr. Abinash Chandra Kaviratna. This treatise comes in parts or lessons,, and takes us into new realms of medical thought and new modes of scientific teaching. The right of tran¬ slation is reserved, but we can give a little idea, perhaps, of how Lesson III. appears in modern English.

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(Meyer Brothers Druggist, St. Louis, January, 1893.)

The following extracts from this interesting old workwill give an idea of its contents.

(University Medical Magazine, Philadelphia, May, 1892..)

Charaka-Samhita. — To the great mass even of the learned of the worldr this book, clothed in ancient Sanskrit, has remained a sealed volume ; but now the scholar, Abinash Chandra Kaviratna, through the lens of translation, is about to diffuse its light among all people.

As a study in primeval history, as a shooting forth of the germs which in modern times have blossomed out into great gardens, this book will be most interesting ; as a practical guide to the treatment of disease we venture to doubt its value.

( The Medical Fortnightly, St. Louis, June 15th, 1892.)

Ancient Medicine in India. — Some time ago Dr. Curtman,. of this city, received from the author, Abinash Chandra Kaviratna, of 20a Cornwallis Street, Calcutta, the fi,rst fascicule of an interesting work. The second fascicule arrived a few days ago.

It is a translation of Charaka-Samhita, an old Brahmin treatise on medicine, written, as it is claimed, some thousands of years ago in the Sanskrit language. Kavi¬ ratna is a Brahmin, by birth, a Pundit by education, and a physician by profession, and has taken almost incre¬ dible pains not only to translate the venerable treatise of Charaka, bu t also to annotate it in such a manner as to

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carefully indentify the plants and other remedies men tioned in the work. We are greatly surprised in finding in this venerable relic of past ages not incantations and superstitious ceremonies recommended for the cure of all the ills that flesh is heir to, but a regular materia medica, comprising many hundereds of medicinal plants and other remedial agents. True, there are many quaint and un¬ couth articles enumerated amongst them, such as eight varieties of urine and the like, but this is no worse than the stercoraceous remedies employed in European prac¬ tice even1 after the middle ages, on the use of which books were written and are found yet as curious relics in the libraries. One of them in the library of the Verein Deutscher Aerzte of this city has the motto : “ Stercora sut varia, si non vis credere, gusta.”

Charaka, the learned physician, is not really the originator of this work, but the editor and commentator of a still more ancient author, Agnivesa. The latter publish¬ ed his Tantra (scientific treatise) with the approval of a conclave of sages, headed by the son of Atri. The claim is put forth that the knowledge thus given to posterity was derived through a chain of sages from Deity itself.

Charaka edited and corrected Agnivesa’s treatise and while the extreme claim of antiquity may possibly be somewhat extravagant, it is certain that Arabian writers of the eighth century quoted from and: commented on Charaka’s work as a very ancient one in their time. A few passages are quoted here selected at random from the pages of Charaka-Samhita,

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( The Bulletin af Pharmacy, Detroit, Mich, August 1892.)