Udoy Chand Dutt

“ One great peculiarity of the Sanskrit language consists in its having numerous synonyms for material objects, and medicines form no exception to this rule. Almost all well-known plants have several synonyms, and some have as many as twenty to forty names ”

“ At the end of the present work is appended a glossary of Indian plants described by Sanskrit writers. In the body of the work I have selected for notice only such drugs and plants as have some definite use in a particular disease, or class of diseases. Numerous other plants used in medicine incidentally, or for economic purposes, are mentioned by Sanskrit writers, but these are not of sufficient importance in a medicinal point of view to deserve detailed notice in a work of this sort. ”

“ The Yunani physicians do not allow this to form a part of their prescriptions, as they believe it destroys the vital principle. The physicians of India, on the contrary, find these drugs more effectual in many disorders, than others of less power, such as the calx of metals. For this reason too I am in the habit of seldom giving these remedies internally, but I usually confine my use of them to external application and as aphrodisiacs which I prescribe to a few friends, who may have derived no benefit from Yunani prescriptions. It is better however to use as few of them as possible. ”

“ Charaka is generally believed to be older than Susruta and consequently to be the oldest work on Sanskrit Medicine now extant. In the introduction to this work it is said that A'treya, a learned devotee, taught the holy A'yurveda to six pupils; namely, Agnivesa, Bhela, Játukarna, Parsára, Hárita and Kharapáni. Agnivesa first wrote a treatise on medicine, and afterwards Bhela and others followed, each producing a separate work and thereby acquiring great renown. The work of Agnivesa was regarded as the best. ”

“ In the first part of the work I have given an account of the mineral medicines used by the Hindus, the mode in which they are prepared for use, their chemical composition, and the principal combinations in which they are employed in different, diseases. With regard to the Vegetable Materia Medica, I have endeavoured to give the correct scientific names of the plants described, by procuring the drugs through practising kavirajas or native physicians, and having them identified in the Royal Botanic Gardens. ”

“ The spoken language varies so much in different parts of the country and among different classes of people, that it would be hopeless to attempt any thing like a complete vocabulary of names as pronounced by the people of the different provinces of which Hindi and Bengali are the vernaculars. ”

“ By the time this work was composed, opium had been largely employed in practice, the use of mercury had extended to almost all diseases, various preparations of gold, silver, tin, copper, orpiment, arsenic, etc., had come into fashion, superseding to a considerable extent the vegetable drugs of the older writers; in short Hindu pathology and therapeutics had reached their acme. Dr. Wise says that the Bhávaprakasa was composed about three hundred years ago. It cannot, at any rate, be a much older work. ”

“ The first is a concise treatise on the causes symptoms and prognosis of diseases, compiled from various authors, and has been used from a long time as the text-book on pathology by students of Hindu Medicine throughout India. Professor Wilson is of opinion that "the Arabians of the eighth century cultivated the Hindu works on Medicine before those of the Greeks ”