collected and transcribed by his disciple Susruta. The "Ayurveda of Susruta" is said by the wise men of the East to be at least of a date 1000 years B.C., and it contains scraps of medical lore which bear every evidence of being still more ancient. Time being of little value to the dreamy Hindu, his chronology is a source of inexhaustible irritation to the uneasy Western savage. Although we of another civilization have good reason for tracing our philological, our scientific and philosophical, even our ethnical origin, back to this cradle of antiquity, we have traveled a long distance since then on all these highways, and not only is the language obscure, but the ideas are many of them unintelligible to us in their old books. Therefore, althoush the "Susruta" is admirably arranged in captions much in accord with modern medical ideas, the Latin translation of Hessler (1844) is in many places confusing, and it is perfectly evident that the translator is often himself groping in the dark.
There are to be found in the "Susruta," and easily referred to in Hessler's rendering, many references to the diseases of the nose and throat, some of them recognizable by our barbaric Western intellect, but many of them to us quite vague.
Charaka Samhita. — The Charaka Samhita is being translated from Sanskrit into English by Avinash Chandra Kaviratna, a learned pundit of Calcutta. This work is said by the Hindus to be a revelation of Indra, the god of the middle air, through Charaka the sage, and is said to be of much more ancient origin than the compilation of "Susruta." At least it is more unintelligible to the modern student of medical history. To the student of philology it is said by Wise and Müller, and Eastern scholars generally, to be of greater value than the "Susruta," and the learned and enthusiastic translator, a patriotic Hindu, indulges in the fond hope that by the diffusion of the wisdom of Charaka a profound impression may be made upon the practice of the medical art as pursued by the energetic sons of the West, the physicians of Europe and America. I am afraid our Hindu confrère does not realize the obduracy of the seed of Japhet.
Both in the "Susruta" and in the "Charaka" the declaration is made, and this is found very little modified in the medical works of the Greeks, that "Whid, bile, phlegm have been said to be the cause of all bodily disease." What follows, however, I have not noted among the writings of the Greeks. It is a little too mystic for them, apparently. "The qualities of passion and darkness have again been indicated to be the causes of mental diseases." — ("Charaka.")
In "Susruta" we learn[1] that there are sixty-four diseases of the mouth in seven situations. The seats of morbid action are the
- ↑ Susrutas: Ex Sanskrita in Latinum: F. Hessler. Erlangae, 1844-55, Tom. I, p. 202.
