Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/219

XI.] among the Greeks, is essentially Indian. He is said to have acquired his medical knowledge from the Egyptians, who, as will be shown further on, had borrowed their art from the Indians. Enfield, in his History of Philosophy, says that Pythagoras learnt his doctrine from Oriental philosophers, meaning the Hindoos. His philosophy bears such a striking resemblance to that of Buddha, that Mr Pocock, in his India in Greece, identifies him with "Buddhagurus" or Buddha. If he borrowed his philosophy from India, he may easily have borrowed the science of medicine from the same source. Plato and Hippocrates both believed in humoral pathology, and taught their pupils that the diseases in the body were caused by four humours, — blood, bile, phlegm, and water. The fact, however, that the three humours of the body are referred to in the Rig Veda (i. 34, 6), establishes the priority of the Indian system beyond all doubt. As for the Grecian physician Galen, who made himself famous at Rome in the second century of the Christian era, it has been said before that he adopted some of the fundamental principles of the Hindoo medical science in his works.

From these similarities one would be justified