Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/33

 affected vital energy is not strcnig enough to al^lie effect the cure that the surgeon is justified to handle his kniYe. We find in the Samhita that ophthalmic, obstetric and other operations were performed with the utmost skill and caution. '

Plastic and Rhinoplastic Operations :- Doctor Hirschberg of Berlin ^ys — "the whole plastic surgery in Europe took a new flight when these cunning devices of Indian workmen became known to us." The transplan- ting of sensible skin-flaps is also an entirely. Indian method (Sushruta, Sutrasthanam, Ch. XV'I). It is Sushruta who first successfully demonstrated the feasibility of mending a dipt earlobe with a patch of sensible skin-flap scraped from the neck or the adjoining part.

To Sushruta is attributed the glory of discovering the art of cataract-crouching which was unknown to the sur- ' geons of ancient Greece and Egypt. Limbs were amputated, abdominal sections were performed, fractures were set, dislocations, hernia and ruptures were reduced, hcemorrhoids rind fistula were removed, and we take pride in saying that the methods recommended in the Sushruta Samhita some- times prove more successful than those adopted by the surgeons of modern Europe, as we shall have occasion to observe later on. In tho case where the intestines are injured, Sushruta advises that "the protruded part should be gently replaced by following with the fingevP A surgeon should enlarge the wound in it, if necessary, by means of a knife.

Mahanilatanlram, Patola X. '~.. 72-74.

B. See the Article on "Ileredily and some of its Surgical Aspects," By F. C. Til/ell, m. d. The ^fediL»al Advance Vd. LXIV. June iqo6. Page 357.