Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/186

166 The messenger should preferably be of the same sex and caste as the patient, should be of good breeding, without any bodily deformity, clever, clean, well dressed, driving a horse or a bullock carriage, and holding fruits and white flowers in his hand. A widow or a mendicant is not considered a suitable messenger. When a physician is himself a qualified practitioner, well knowing the virtues and properties of drugs, his work becomes much easier if the messenger who comes for him is exact in his description of the disease, if the person attending the patient is careful in giving medicine at stated times, and if the patient is reasonable enough to follow the directions of the physician, and never to question the efficacy of the medicines prescribed.

Next to omens, the Hindoo physician seeks to derive some assistance from his knowledge of dream phenomena and astrology, to ascertain the probable result of his treatment. Everybody may be said to have experienced a dream, but few can say how the body in that state affects the mind, and how this affection produces the phenomena of dreams. Classical writers like Artemidorus, Macrobus, and Thomas Aquinas have in their works tried to solve the problem, and to estab-