dawn

http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/Volumes/15/10/0870-0874.pdf.

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Dawn of Science

5.The Healing Art

T Padmanabhan

Keywords

Surgery, Charaka Samhita,

Hippocrates, acupuncture,

Galen.

T Padmanabhan works at

IUCAA, Pune and is

interested in all areas

of theoretical physics,

especially those which

have something to do with

gravity.

Previous parts:

Resonance, Vol.15: p.498;

p.590; p.684; p.774.

It was in the field of surgery that ancient Indian medical

practice achieved the most.

Primitive tribes used a variety of plants and plant products for

food and realised that some of these are poisonous and some

curative. Those in the tribe who were quick to appreciate these

effects could assert considerable power over others. These were

the earliest among ‘witch doctors’. Healing soon got inextricably

mixed with magical practices and with gods and demons. And

medicine was in the hands of godmen and witch doctors as it is, to

some extent, even today. To retain their special status, it was also

necessary for them to shroud the details of their practices in magic

and mystery.

It is, therefore, rather surprising that the science of medicine

developed to a high degree in two of the ancient civilisations –

Indian and Greek – in spite of their abounding supernatural

beliefs. The earliest concepts of Indian medicine are presented in

one of the four Vedas, the Atharvaveda, which probably dates

back to 2000 BC. Several diseases like fever, cough, diarrhoea,

abscesses, etc., and their herbal remedies are mentioned in the

Vedas. Unfortunately, the cures are mixed up with spurious

magical practices to allow an objective evaluation.

The golden age of Indian medicine, however, occurred in the

post-vedic period, during 800 BC to AD 100. Two major medical

treatises, Charaka Samhita and Sushruta Samhita, appeared dur-

ing this period. These texts discuss several aspects of medicine:

symptoms, diagnosis and classification of diseases, preparation

of medicines from plants, diet and care of patients, etc.

Indian medicine believed that diseases are caused by the imbal-

ance among three vital entities acting in the body: air (vayu or

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Figure 1.

Figure 2.

WHEN

WHERE

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vata), phlegm (kapha) and bile (pitta). The seven con-

stituents of the body – blood, flesh, fat, bone, marrow,

chyle end semen – are supposed to be produced by the

action of these three entities. Most of the cures involved

restoring the balance between these three entities by

dietary and herbal means. Charaka lists 500 medicinal

plants while Sushruta has a more extensive list of 760.

In addition, several animal products and minerals were

used. The Indian medical man could administer emetics,

purgatives, enemas and also sneezing powders and herbal fumes.

But it was in the field of surgery that Indian medicine achieved the

most. By about AD 100, several surgical procedures were known

and practised; these included excision of tumours, incision of

abscesses, removal of fluids from parts of the body, probing of

fistulas and stitching of open wounds. The classical texts give

very detailed instructions about these operations and about the

choice of instruments. Sushruta, for instance, describes 20 sharp

and about 100 blunt instruments – knives of different kinds,

scissors, trocars (for piercing tissues), saws, needles, forceps,

levers and hooks. Most of the instruments were made of steel and

the operations seem to have been performed using alcohol as an

anaesthetic.

Almost around the same time, medical art was thriving in Greece

as well. Hippocrates (460 BC–370 BC) seems to be the first

person to state categorically that diseases are due to natural

causes and not curses from Gods. Very little is known about his

life and work; historians think that most of the works attributed to

Figure 3. A noted physi-

cian in India, Sushruta, was

known for a range of writ-

ings.

Courtesy:http://www.blatner.

com/adam/consctransf/

historyofmedicine/1-overview/

brief.html

Figure 4. Hippocrates.

Courtesy: http://www.blatner.

com/adam/consctransf/

historyofmedicine/1-overview/

brief.html

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him could have been written by several other people who lived

much later. (Since Hippocratas’ name carried much weight in

Greece, people probably preferred to attribute their own ideas to

Hippocrates.) Whatever the truth, the books that make up the

collection Corpus Hippocraticum has earned him the title the

‘father of modern medicine’. Here he describes the symptoms

and the courses of illnesses clearly and concisely. Hippocrates

repeatedly emphasized the natural cause for illnesses and sought

to cure them in a methodical way. He laid much stress on the

effects of diet, occupation, climate and environment on health.

His greatest legacy perhaps was the code of conduct for medical

practitioners, the ‘Hippocratic Oath’, which is still used at the

time of medical graduation.

The first, formal medical school was established in Alexandria

around 300 BC and thrived under the Greek anatomist, Herophilus.

He was the first to dissect human bodies in public. (In the pre-

Christian era, there was no taboo on dissection and the Greeks

took advantage of it. In contrast ancient Indians desisted from

cutting open bodies. Sushruta Samhita recommends an elaborate

procedure for soaking a body in water so that parts can be

removed without cutting!) Herophilus gave particularly detailed

descriptions of the brain, parts of the eye, ovaries and uterus; he

named the retina, the duodenum and the prostate gland. These

investigations were continued by Erasistratus (304–250 BC) who

also taught at Alexandria. By now medical science had detailed

knowledge of the various organs of the body though it had very

little idea of its functions.

Figure 5. Galen’s work around 140 AD in Rome ended

up being authoritative in Europe until the 16th cen-

tury! Here he is using the technique of ‘cupping’,

creating small vacuums in heated cups to ‘draw the

poisons out’. This technique continued in folk culture

through the early 20th century.

Courtesy: http://www.blatner. com/adam/consctransf/

historyofmedicine/1-overview/brief.html

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Soon after Erasistratus, the study of anatomy declined because of

religious objections to the dissection of the human body. Later

workers, notably Galen (AD 130–200), had to rely on animal

dissections to understand anatomy. In spite of such constraints,

Galen could make progress. He noticed that arteries carried

blood, which was set into a rhythmic motion by the pounding of

the heart. He used the pulse as a diagnostic test but narrowly

missed discovering the circulation of blood!

Suggested Reading

[1]

There are several articles on the history of medicine at

http://dodd.cmcvellore.ac.in/hom/thumbnails.html

[2]

Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and

Technology, Doubleday, 1982.

Address for Correspondence

T Padmanabhan

IUCAA, Post Bag 4

Pune University Campus

Ganeshkhind

Pune 411 007 India.

Email:

paddy@iucaa.ernet.in

nabhan@iucaa.ernet.in

Box 1. Chinese Medicine

The Chinese system of medicine also has great antiquity. Several medical texts originated in China during the

period 500 BC to AD 300. The most famous amongst them were the compilations Nei Ching and Mo Ching.

Traditional medicine in China is based on the theory of Yin and Yang. Illnesses are supposed to be caused by

the imbalance between these two active principles in the body. However, the Chinese understanding of

anatomy was primitive – again because of the religious restrictions on the dissection of the body – but they

made good progress in diagnostics. Mo Ching, for example, describes detailed rules for the interpretation of the

pulse, which is to be measured not only at the wrist but also certain other parts of the body!

The mysterious and typically Chinese concept in medicine is acupuncture. This consists of insertion of hot or

cold metal needles into the body; the needles may range in lengths from 3 to 25 cm. These needles provide the

cure, the practitioners claimed, by changing the distribution of Yin and Yang in the body and restoring the

balance between them. Acupuncture dates from before 2500 BC and is strangely different from the widely

practised concepts of modern (Western) medicine.