Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/418

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Doctors, half-a-dozen Bachelors, and one Licentiate in a population numbering some 50,000,000 of people! Some future Historian looking at these figures might jump at the conclusion that this continent, during the commencement of the 19th century, was singularly fortunate as regards health, and that the fell pestilences which in some other parts of the world proved so disastrous, were here unknown. Yet what a fallacy such a conclusion would be! As the Principal of the Medical College, this fact is of singular interest to me, and it has often been present to my mind not only that the number of Native students who presented themselves to study Medicine, apart from those entering the service of Government, was singularly small, but that the Brahmins practically held altogether aloof. What was the cause of this? If we turn to the ancient History of India, we find that medicine far from being a despised science, was one of the most honoured. Next to the vocation of Priest, that of the Doctor seems to have been the most respected. Nay, I am not sure it was, in the most ancient times, second even to that of the Priest, for I find in your ancient books that one of the fourteen "ratnas" or precious objects which the gods produced by churning the ocean after the deluge was a "Learned Physician," In the Mahabharata is an account of this ocean churning for the recovery of lost treasures, and the one most desired and sought for was the Ambrosia which confers life and health. "The gods had failed, but when Ananta, the Serpent King, bid the great snake Vasaki wind himself as a churning cord around the mountain Mandara, all the gods pulled vigorously at the living cord, until from the agitated floods uprose the Moon, and the Goddess Lakshmi; the white Horse and the wonderful gem called Kaustubba;

And lastly from the troubled waves,
 * Amidst the glorious cheering,

Uprose Dhanwantari the sage,
 * The lost Ambrosia bearing.

This was the famous Physician, bearing in his hand a white jug containing the coveted Ambrosia." This Dhanwantari is said by some to have obtained the Ayur Veda—the ancient Medical Record of the Hindoos—from Brahma direct, by others to have been instructed in its mysteries by Indra, the God of Heaven, where Dhanwantari practised medicine with great success. But witnessing the ignorance and misery of mankind, he descended upon earth to cure their maladies and to instruct them in the means of preventing as well as curing diseases. This Dhanwantari became King of