Page:Ancient India, 2000 B.C.-800 A.D..djvu/158

140 The Ascendency of Magadha. [epoch i v. Susruta's work is divided into six parts, and treats of surgical operations, of the symptoms of various diseases, of the structure of the body, puberty, conception and growth, of wounds, ulcers, fractures, and midwifery, and of antidotes and special diseases.

Dr. Royle has shown that the medicinal use of metals was largely known to the Hindus. They were acquainted with the oxides of copper, iron, tin, zinc, and lead; with the sulphurets of iron, copper, antimony, mercury, and arsenic; with the sulphates of copper, zinc, and iron; with the diacetate of copper and the carbonate of lead and iron. "Though the ancient Greeks and Romans," says Dr. Royle, "used many metallic substances as external applications, it is generally supposed the Arabs were the first to prescribe them internally. … But in the works of Charaka and Susruta, to which, as has been proved, the earliest of the Arabs had access, we find numerous metallic substances directed to be given internally."

The vegetable resources of India are almost unlimited, and the knowledge of drugs shown in the works named above is correspondingly extensive. Most of them are assuaging and depuratory medicines, suited to the climate of the country and the unexcitable constitution of the people. But the knowledge of surgery among the ancient Hindus was even more remarkable than their knowledge of drugs; and it will no doubt excite some surprise, says Dr. Royle, "to find among the operations of those ancient surgeons those of lithotomy and the extraction of fœtus ex utero, and that no less than 127 surgical instruments are described in their works".

The Arabs had access early to the Hindu works of medicine. Serapion, Rhazes, and Avicenna quote Charaka, and Harun-al-Rashid in the eighth century after Christ retained as his own physicians two Hindu doctors known as Manka and Saleh in the Arabian records.