Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/290

186 temperament of the patient, and the state of his digestion as well as the seat of the affection, the physical features of the country and the then prevailing season of the year, should prescribe a diet which he thinks the most proper and suitable to the requirements of the case. Since the conditions infinitely vary in the different types of diseases and even the same conditions do not obtain in one and the same type,* physicians generally prescribe a diet of their own selection, one determined with regard to its general effect on health, in preference to one that has been laid down in books of medicine.

If asked to prescribe either milk or poison to a healthy person, a physician would naturally prescribe the former, and thereby, prove the absolute wholesomeness of milk and unconditional harmfulness of poison. Thus is verified, Sushruta, the correctness of the dictum, that things such as water, etc., are absolutely and unconditionally wholesome or otherwise, by virtue of their respective natural properties.

Things which are unwholesome through combination:—Now I shall enumerate the names of substances which become positively unwholesome through incompatible combinations. The