Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/166

146 root (Dregia volubilis) so as to form a cavity, fill it with the triturated mass, close the mouth, and drop the preparation in an earthen vessel luted with mud and cloth and place it over a fire. Mercury will then be fit to be reduced to Bhasma. There are other processes more or less intricate in which various Yantras or apparata are required.

Many treatises have been written on the wonderful power of Rasa or Mercury. The followers of a religious doctrine in India called Euseshism consider Mercury as one of the manifestations of God. It is generally believed that the combination of mercury with other metals adds considerably to the intrinsic powers of these metals as useful remedies. Paracelsus of Hohenheim, who is known in Europe as "the Reformer of Medicine," in referring to the Yogis of India, says that " these are extremely long-lived, every man of them living to 150 or 200 years. They eat very little, rice and milk chiefly. And these people make use of a very strange beverage, a potion of sulphur and quicksilver mixed together, and this, they say, they drink twice every month. This, they say, gives them long life." The Yogis of India, as we have said, are supposed to have