unfit for being cauterised with alkalis. Moreover their application is not to be sanctioned over the veins, nerves, joints, gristles or tender bones or cartilages, sutures, arteries, throat, umbilicus, genitals, regions of Srotas (external channels), parts covered over with a thin layer of flesh, inside the nails and other vulnerable parts of the body, nor in diseases of the eyes, excepting those which affect the eyelids.
Alkalis fail to produce any beneficial effect in a patient suffering from œdema of the limbs, or suffering from bone- ache, or laid up with a disease affecting the joints or the heart, or in a person of impaired appetite who has lost all relish for food, even when their use is otherwise indicated.
Authoritative verse on the subject:-An Alkali administered by an ignorant physician is to be dreaded more than poison, fire, blows with a weapon, thunder-bolts, or death itself; while in the hand of an intelligent physician it is potent enough to speedily subdue all serious diseases in which its use is indicated.
Thus ends the eleventh Chapter of the Sutrasthánam in the Sushruta Samhitá which treats of the Pharmacy of Alkalis.
