Page:History of Indian Medicine.djvu/21

HISTORY OF INDIAN MEDICINE would turn all base metals into gold, but to the alchemists we owe the science o£ Chemistry which is, undoubtedly, more precious than what was the object of their search. Travellers who gathered knowledge of plants were herbalists, but the science of Botany had its origin in the rude attempts of such men at classification and description of the vegetable kingdom. In a similar way we may collect facts about medical practice in different lands. We may be fortunate in detecting resem¬ blances between such facts or similarity which may exist between apparently dissimilar systems. We may trace unity in the apparently anomalous and multiple systems of the healing art. When our survey of the different systems is completed, the so-called empirical facts should be brought into relation with some general law, and our enquiry would then be entitled to be considered as science. We may find out some order or law in the multiplicity of the practices of the art of medical science, though such practices may be right or wrong. Then we should attempt at classification ; we may reduce the systems into groups and sub-groups, families and sub-families. Such a study will bring before us many curious and obsolete facts of medical science, facts which are un¬ important when judged by themselves, but which, when studied in reference to important medical theories, would prove highly useful adjuncts to our study of the progress of science. Geologists have utilised fossils to identify strata, to arrange them in the order of their evolution, and to divide them into larger groups. We shall try to give a summary of the results achieved by scholars by the comparative study of medical science.

The comparative method recognises the evolution of medicine as a science from empirical knowledge and folk- medicine, but is not silent concerning the evolution of