Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/181

Chap.X.] all medical treatment, and mostly those which are of more than a year's standing. Diseases affecting a Brahmana well versed in the Vedas, or a king, or a woman, or an infant, or an old man, or a timid person, or a man in the royal service, or a cunning man, or a man who pretends to possess a knowledge of the science of medicine, or a man who conceals his disease, or a man of an excessively irascible temperament, or a man who has no control over his senses, or a man in extremely indigent circumstances of life or without any one to take care of him, are apt to run into an incurable type though appearing in a common or curable form at the outset. The physician, who practises his art with a regard to these facts, acquires piety, wealth, fame and all wished for objects in life.

Authoritative verse on the subject:—A physician should abjure the company of women, nor should he speak in private to them or joke with them. A physician is forbidden to take anything but cooked rice from the hands of a woman.

Thus ends the tenth Chapter of the Sutrasthánam in the Sushruta Samhita which treats of the essential qualifications of a physician.