Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/382

278 A curse, imprecation, or wailing like "woe to me", as well as sobs, groans, reports of defecation or vomiting, the brayings of an ass, the frightened sound of a camel, an obstacle or impediment in the path of a physician, or a sudden breakage, collapse, or the falling of any article from a cupboard, and a sad or dejected spirit of the physician without any assignable cause, should be regarded as evil omens at the time of his starting.

These omens should be observed or attended to at the time of first entering the house of a patient, or at the threshold or within its walls, but not after the physician has once commenced the medical treatment. The sight of a knot of torn hairs, ashes, bones, wood, stone, husks of grain, cotton, thorns, a bedstead with its legs upturned, wine, water, fat, oil, sesamum, dried grass, straw, a eunuch, a deformed person or one with a broken limb, a nude man, or one with a clean shaved head, or clad in a black garment, should be regarded as evil omens by a physician, whether noticed by him at the time of starting or after getting into a sick room. Pots or utensils placed in pendent brackets, and found to be spontaneously moving about without any definite cause, as well as any other fallen articles digged in, smashed in or thrown out of the sick-room; a physician sitting dejected and gathered up in his seat, and the patient sitting with a downcast face, or pricking his body or at the bed clothes