Medicine and Surgery in Ancient India
"The physician employed spells and medicaments to cure ills. The physician was “fiend-slayer and chaser of disease.” Various diseases are named and their symptoms referred to: jaundice, “white leprosy,” of…
From: 2000 B.C.E. To: 500 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“Medicine and Surgery,” from Life in Ancient India by P.T. Srinivas Iyengar, 1912.
The physician employed spells and medicaments to cure ills. The physician was “fiend-slayer and chaser of disease.” Various diseases are named and their symptoms referred to: jaundice, “white leprosy,” of which several varieties are mentioned, anyedyu, tritiyaka, ubhayadyu, quotidian, tertian, quartan, continuous, summer, rainy, autumnal, phthisis, cough, herpes, worms, of which numerous species are named, rheumatism, scrofula, abscess, inflammation of the eyes, penetrating pain, swelling of glands, anemia, an eruption in the eye, dysentery, boils, tumours, palpitation, venereals, hereditary diseases,heart-disease, debility, convulsions, catarrh, and elephantiasis.
The “cold, hot and trembling” stages of malarial fever were differentiated; small-pox is probably intended by the “fever that is spotted, speckled, ruddy like a sprinkling,” and even moveable kidneys diagnosed. Many other names of diseases occur, but their meanings cannot be discovered.
Various drugs were used as medicines. It is noteworthy that the people of the plains knew little about these drugs; an Asuri first discovered a black plant which was used as a remedy for white leprosy. Drugs were bought from Kirata girls who dug them upon the high ridges of the mountains and exchanged them for clothes, straw mattresses, and skins, and these drugs were used in the treatment of disease; many names of drugs occur in the Atharva Veda, but most of them have not yet been identified; one, pris’niparni (Hermionitis cordifolia) was used to prevent threatened abortion, and it is interesting to note that Sus’ruta recommended the same drug for the same purpose.
Besides medicine derived from plants, the earth of white ants was a favourite remedy. A lump from an anthill was fastened on the body of a poisoned person; he was given some of it (in water) to drink; he was made to rinse his mouth with the same solution of it in warm water. This remedy was administered in the case of many other diseases. In the Atharva Veda it is prescribed for flux of all kinds and as an antidote against poison. The ant is called “the daughter of the Asuras.”
The horn of the gazelle was used for curing inherited diseases and urine for boils, called the arrow of Rudra, and the remedy was called the medicine of Rudra.
Disease was regarded mostly as the result of sin against gods or possession by demons; hence the boundaries between medicine and demonology were of the flimsiest, bheshajam included both medication and exorcism. Dropsy was the fetter of Varuna; and though the association of dropsy with disease of the heart was known, the treatment consisted in sprinkling on the patient water consecrated with the recitation of A.V.vi.24. That water was believed to sympathetically drive out the water of dropsy. A reed was used as a catheter in cases of difficult micturition, but the whole of the hymn had to be recited also.
In cases of fever, a frog was tied to the leg of the cot of the patient and charms were uttered to make the cool frog attract the heat of the fever. Often the treatment was based on colour merely; red objects were placed round a patient to cure him of jaundice and Rohinn, the red goddess, was worshipped; the “touch cure” was also resorted to, of course fortified by spells.
Aphrodisiac drugs, charms, and amulets were in great demand. Varuna when he became mritabhraja, first used a s’ephaharshani drug and made his pasas dhanuriva. Since then priest-physicians sang to their patients. “The strength of the horse, the mule, the goat, and the ram, moreover the strength of the bull bestow upon him, O controller of bodies,” and restored to them their lost virility. An amulet made from the skin on the shoulder of the elephant and tied on with hair from its tail was also employed for the same purpose.
Though the treatment of diseases was so crude, these ancient physicians had a better knowledge of anatomy than their latter-day descendants because they cut many animals for sacrifice and had to do it skilfully, without displeasing the gods by mangling the limbs of the animal, and “skilful slaughterers loosed the joints of animals” carefully.
Besides the obvious parts of the body, the following out-of-the-way ones were named. Vertebrae, ankle joint, collar-bone, hind-head, entrails, bladder, ureters, perineum, rectum. As examples of poetical names we have pativedana, husband-finder, for the breasts. The difference between arterial and venous blood is referred to, and hira and dhamani used in the sense of veins and arteries.
The surgeons used ligatures for stopping bleeding and “built a rampart of sand,” i.e., probably filled bandages with wet sand for the same purpose. The surgeon, like the physician, used both knives and mantras.
Iyengar, P.T. Srinivas. Life in Ancient India. Srinivasa Varadachari, 1912.
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