Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/57

 them; a sanctity of this kind is not acquired without the lapse of a considerable time; and we think it is not going too far to say, Firstly, that these books must have been in existence, as we now have them, within thirty years, earlier or later, of, at least, 360 or 370 B. C." (Intro. p. xxiii).

It is therefore evident that almost before the birth of Hippocrates, the Hindus had elaborated a system of medicine based upon the humoral pathology. And yet Hass would have it that the Greeks, in the field of medicine as in several others, were the "pioneers and the first teachers of the world."

M Liétard very justly observes that if it could be proved that the doctrine of humoral