Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/107

VI.] three of this kind ; (c) such as impair the limbs if wounded : there are forty-four of these ; (d) parts which when slightly wounded produce intense pain : the number of such parts being eight ; and (e) vital parts which produce fatal results if foreign bodies located therein be extracted : of these there are three in the body. All these parts are described at length, and surgeons are particularly warned to avoid operations on these.

The science of Aryan Medicine is, as we have seen, based on the three morbific diatheses. These dispositions are born with man — nay, it is asserted that there is no substance in the universe which does not owe its formation to the humours in more or less proportion. The humoral pathology of the ancient Aryans has been in existence for ages. Diagnosis made on the principle of this theory, and medicines administered in conformity with its teachings, have, say the Hindoos, worked pretty successfully in India. This theory seems to have been borrowed from the Hindoos by Hippocrates (460 B.C.), the Father of Greek Medicine, and to have retained its hold on the medical schools of Europe for more than 2000 years. To discard the theory