Medicine
From the standpoint of comparative chronology, Hindu medicine has been ahead of the European and has been of service in its growth and development.
• Two great names in Hindu medicine are Charaka (c 6th to 4th century BCE?), the physician, and Sushruta (early CE), the surgeon.
‣ They were not the founders of their respective sciences, but the premier organizers of the cumulative experience of previous centuries. In observation lay their great strength, the "natural history of disease" was their special study. Both these schools were in existence about 500 BCE. according to Hoernle.
‣ By the 1st and 2nd centuries CE surgery was a well developed art. Many instruments, were devised, of which 127 are mentioned. The materia medica grew from age to age with the introduction of new drugs (vegetable, animal and mineral), of which the therapeutic effects were tested by the 'experiments' of researchers.
(1) The Hindus have had hospitals and dispensaries since at least the 3rd century BCE.
(2) The smoking of datura leaves in asthma, treatment of paralysis and dyspepsia by nux vomica, use of croton tigliurn, etc., are modern in Europe, but have come down in India since very old times.
(3) The Hindus were the first in the world to advocate the 'internal' use of mercury. Pliny knew only of its external use (1st century CE). By the 6th century it was well established among Hindu practioners as an aphrodisiac and tonic. It is mentioned by VarAha-mihira along with iron
(4) The Greeks and Romans used metallic substances for external application. The Saracens are usually credited with their internal administration for the first time in the history of medicine.
But in this as in other matters the Hindus anticipated the Saracens, and, in fact, taught them. As Roy]e observes, the earliest of the Saracens had access to the writings of Charaka and Sushruta, who had given directions for the internal use of numerous metallic substances.
(5) In the prescriptions of Dr.VAgbhaTa mineral and natural salts had a conspicuous place. His book was translated into Arabic in the 8th century.
(6) From the 6th century on, every Hindu treatise on materia medica has more or less recommended metallic preparations for internal use. It was only after Paracelsus at the end of the 16th century that thee had a recognized place in European science.
• Hindu medicine has influenced the medical systems of other peoples of the world. The work of Indian physicians and pharmacologists was known in ancient Greece and Rome. The materia medica of the Hindus has influenced medkeval European practice also through the Saracens.
Surgery
Tun ancient Hindu surgeons gave expression to the most modern views about the importance of their science. They declared:
• "Surgery is the first and best of the medical sciences, less liable than any other to the fallacies of conjectural and inferential practices, pure in itself, perpetual in its applicability, the worthy produce of Heavens, and certain source of Fame."
• Another very remarkably modern idea of these surgeons was that "the first, best, and most important of all implements is the hand."
• Surgery is one of the oldest branches of medical sciene in India. The Hindu term for it is shalya or the "art of removing foreign substances from thee
body; especially the arrow". It seems to have had its origin in warfare and in the accidents of outdoor work, eg., hunting and agriculture.
• The Hindu surgeons performed lithotomy, could extract the dead foetus, and could remove external matter accidentally introduced into the body, eg., iron, stones, hair, bones, wood, ete.
‣ They were used to paracentesis, thoracis, and abdominis, and treated different kinds of inflammation, abesses, and other surgical diseases.
‣ Hazardous operations and the art of cutting, healing ulcers, setting bones, and the use of esckarotics, were the forte of a section of India's medical men.
• Dissection of the human body and venesection were normal facts in medical India. The doctors of the Sushruta school declared that dissection was necessaiy for a correct knowledge of the internal structure of the body.
‣ Dissection gave them an intimate knowledge of the diseases to which the body is liable.
‣ It also helped them in their surgical operations to avoid the vital parts. It
gave them, besides, an accurate knowledge of the human anatomy.
• The Hindu surgical laboratory consisted of at least 127 instruments. The operators were used to the manipulation of saws, lancets, needles, knives, scissors, hooks, pincers, probes, nippers, forceps, tongs, catheters, syringes, loadstones, rods, etc.
• For laboratory practice students operated on wax, gourds, cucumbers, and other fruits.
‣ Tapping and puncturing were demonstrated on a leather bag of water or soft mud.
‣ Fresh hides of animals, or dead bodies, were used in the demonstration of scarification and bleeding.
‣ The use of the probe was practised on hollow bamboos.
‣ Flexible models of the human body were in use for practice in bandaging.
‣ Caustics and cauteries were used on animals.
Anatomy and Physiology
Hippocrates, the founder of Greek medicine, was unacquainted with anatomy and, physiology. His ignorance was due to the superstitious respect which the Greeks paid to their dead. But the fathers of Hindu medicine were remarkably accurate in some of their observations and descriptions.
• The Hindus have described 500 muscles-—400 in the extremities, 66 in the trunk, and 34 in the region above the clavicle.
‣ They knew of the ligaments, sutures, lymphatics, nerve plexuses, fascia, adipose tissue, vascular tissue, mucous membrane of the digestive canal, synovial membranes, etc.
(a) Osteology
The anatomical system of the Hindus was almost modern. As Hoernie remarks: "Its extent and accuracy are surprising, when we allow for their, early age-—probably the 6th century BCE-—and their peculiar method of definition.”
• There are about 200 bones in the human body according to modern osteology. Charaka counted and Suhruta 300. The former counted the 32 sockets of teeth and the 20 nails as separate bones. These were not admitted by Sushruta.
• The additional 100 in Sushruta's count, however, has to be explained. This large excess is principally due to the fact that, like Charaka, he regarded the cartilages and the prominent parts of bones (the modern 'processes' and 'protuberances') as if they were separate bones. In Europe the first correct description of the osseous system was given by Vesalius in 1543.
(b) The Doctrine of Humors
The physiology of humors, whatever its worth, is older in India than in Greece. At any rate, the Hindu and the Greek humoral pathologies are independent systems. Hippocrates counted four humors, viz. blood, bile, water, and phlegm; but Charaka propounded three, viz. air, bile, and phlegm.
(c) Digestion
The Hindu physicians knew the digestive system well and described it satisfactorily.
1. The function of different digestive fluids was understood. They were familiar with the acid gastric juice in the stomach. They knew also that in the small intestines there is a digestive substance in the bile.
2. They were familiar with, and eplained, the conversion of the semi-digested food (chyme) into chyle, and of that again into blood.
3. They explained the chemical changes by the action of metabolic heat.
(d) Circulation of Blood
In Europe, previous to Harvey's epoch-making discovery (i628), "the movement of the blood was believed to be confined to the veins, and was thought to be a to-and-from movement." (Halliburton).
• The Hindus knew that the heart (i) receives the chyle-"essence", i.e., venous blood, (2) sends it down to the liver, where it is transformed into red blood,
and (3) gets it back as red blood from the liver.
‣ There was thus the idea of a chakra or wheel, ie., self-returning circle of “circulation".
• But the Hindus did not understand the process clearly.
(1) They did not know that the pathway of the blood round and round the body is a "double circle", ie., "systemic" circulation and "pulmonary" circulation.
(2) Neither Charaka nor Sushruta, therefore, understood the function of the lungs in the oxygenation of blood. This was not known to the ancients in Europe also, eg., to Galen
(130 CE).
The Harveyan Circulation was thus not anticipated by the Hindus. The Hindu conception of the vascular system is given below:
(i) There are two classes of blood-conductors (i) shira--vein, and dhamanI--artery;
(2) The.heart is connected with the liver by both;
(3) The shiras bring the impure blood (venous) from the heart into the liver, and the dhamanIs conduct the pure (arterial) blood from the livir into the heart.
(e) Nervous System
Neither in India nor in Europe did the ancients understand the nervous system. Aristotle’s error was committed by Charaka and Sushruta also. They all regarded the heart to be the central organ and seat of consciousness. The nerves (sensory and motor) were believed to ascend to and descend from the heart.
Later investigators, however, corrected this mistake both in the East and the West. Like Galen, the Greek (2nd century CE), the Tantrists and Yogaists of India came to know the truth that the brain (and the spinal cord) is the real organ of "mind".
Accordiig to Bamandas Basu the nervous system is more accurately described in the mystical 'Tantras' than in purely medical treatises. We get the fllowing from Shiva samhitA:
1. Familiarity with the brain and spinal cord;
2. The idea that the central nervous system is composed of gray and white matters;
3. Familiarity with the lateral ventricles of the brain (through the fourth and third ventricles);
4. Familiarity with the ganglia and plexuses of the cerebrospinal system;
5. The idea that the brain is composed of chandra-kalA or convolutions resembling half-moons;
6. The idea that the six chakras are the vital and important sympathetic plexuses, presiding over all the functions of organic life. Yoga or contemplation means control over tle functions of these plexuses.
According to Seal, also, the enumeration, by Yogaists, of the spinal nerves with the connected sympathetic chain and ganglia, is a distinct improvement oxi the anatomical knowledge of Charaka and Sushruta. Thus, according to the Yoga physiologists,
(i) The suShumna is the central cord in the vertebral column. The two chains of sympathetic ganglia on the left and the right are named iDa and pingala respectively. The sympathetic nerves have their main connection with suShumna at the solar plexus. There are 700 nerve-cords in the sympathefic-spinal system.
(2) The soul has its special seat within the brahmarandhra above the forainen of Monro and he middle commissure, but traverses the whole cerebro-spinal axis, up and down, along the suShumna.
Embryology
In the history of science Hindu embryologists deserve recognition
(i) as having made precise observations, some of which are great approximations to the latest demonstrated truths, and
(2) as having guessed at theories, some of which are eminently suggestive. As for pseudo-biological hypotheses, India has not been more prolific than Europe from Hippocrates to Buffon.
Some of the facts observed and explained by Charaka and Sushruta are:
(i) All the members of the human organism are formed at the same time, but are ectreme1y small, as the first sprig of the bamboo contains the leaves, etc., of the future plant.
• This idea of the development of the fertilized ovum by 'palingenesis' survived in India after a long struggle with rival theories. It is an established truth today that though we find cells of one type in glands, of another type in the brain, of another type in the blood, and so forth, nevertheless all of them sprang from one original single cell.
(2) "The hard substances of the foetus, as hairs, bones, nails, teeth, vessels, ligaments, etc., are produced from the semen, and resemble the same part as in the father;
• and the soft parts as flesh, blood, fat, marrow, heart, navel, liver, spleen, intestines, etc., are formed principally from the blood of the mother, and resemble her.”
(3) Weisman’s theory of "germinal cotinuity" is the greatest discovery of modern embryology. It is now held that 'somatic' cells contribute absolutely nothing to the original germ-plasm, that no parent ever produces a germ cell, that the individual inherits nothing from his parents, but both he and they obtain their characteristics from a common source, and that the line of descent or inheritance is from germ-cell to germ-cell, not from parents.
This recent idea about the physical basis of inheritance brings out the distinction between germ-cells and body-cells (somatic). It was guessed to a certain extent by the Hindu biologists also in their controversy regarding the transmission of congenital deformities and constitutional diseases of parents to offspring.
• Atreya held that "the parental seed (germ-plasm) contains the whole parental organism in miniature (or in-potentia), but it is independent of the parents’ developed organs, and is not necessarily affected by their idosyncrasies or deformities”.
‣ The germ-plasm was described as an organic whole independent of the developed parental body and its organs. The physiological characters and predispositions of the offspring were explained as being determined by the constituent elements of this parental seed. The continued identity of the germ-plasm from generation to generation may be taken as a corollary to this, though nowhere expressly stated.
(4) Elementary facts about impregnation, the cycle of sex, menopause, etc., could not but be obrrved:
(i) The menses continue for seventeen days during which the woman may be impregnated, and not at any other season. This Hindu idea of absolute sterility after a certain number of days is still held by some modern physiologists, though not a demonstrated truth.
(ii) The menses remain till the fiftieth year, when the woman is of a weak constitution; but it continues longer when the individual is strong.
(5) Modern physiology would not reject the little kernel of truth that there is in the following statement:
"The menses, after conception, goes in part to form the placenta, and as the blood flows every month, it coagulates to form the embryo; an upper layer being added every month to the embryo; and another portion to the breasts, of the mother, by which the mammae increased in size."
(6) The stages of foetal development described on the basis of post-mortem operations and major operations in obstetric surgery had also much of the truth that has been established in recent years.
"In the first month the mixture of the semen and menses forms a small mass like a pea; seven days after conception, it has the form of a bubble or inflated bag. On the tenth it is red, and on the fifteenth it resembles a small round piece of flesh. At one month it has small fibres proceeding from it and is animated with life."
One need not try to compare with this accaunt the advanced and definite ideas of modern embryology about the development of the successive generations of cells, from the original fertilized ovum, eg., 'morula', 'blastocyst', 'yolk sac', 'entoderm', 'ectoderm', 'mesoderm', etc. But the following may be accepted for 'popular' purposes:
In the third month five eminences appear, which when developed become the, hands, feet. and head. In the sixth month all the members of the body are formed, etc.
(7) The following observation about the development of the rudimentary organs of reproduction contains a suggestive hint:
The foetus for a time remains indeterminate, and then takes on a definite male or female character. In the second month the sexual character is indicated by the shape of the foetus, the shape of a round joint (?) indicating the male sex, and the elongated shape, as of a muscle (?), the female sex.
(8) What determines sex? Can sex be produced at will? These questions have engaged the attention of scientists as well as quacks all through the ages both in the East and the West. The following Hindu ideas have had their European duplicates:
(i) When conception occurs on the unequal days of menses, a female child will be born.
(ii) Should the germ have more of the qualities of the semen, a male child will be formed, and of the menses, a female child.
(iii) Before the foetus takes on a definite male or female character, the development of the sex may be modified to some extent by food and drugs.
Modern scientists have advanced several theories about sex-deterniinants. The truth remains yet to be discovered.
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