Page:Sushruta Samhita Vol 1.djvu/420

316 lips, palms of hands and soles of feet are glossy, and tinged with a shade of red, should be looked upon as one in whom blood forms the essential and predominant principle. A man with a soft, smooth and pleasant skin and hair should be considered as one in whom serum (Tvak) forms the essential principle of the body. In respect of worldly success and longevity, men of each of the aforesaid types should be successively judged inferior to men belonging to the one preceding it in the above order of enumeration.

Authoritative verse on the subject:-A qualified physician should examine the duration of life in a patient with the help of the aforesaid measures of limbs and the essential bodily principles, before proceeding to take up his medical treatment, and his professional success should be decidedly increased thereby.

All the diseases, whose names have been specifically enumerated before, may be grouped under any of the three different heads as the curable, the suppressible (Yapya) and the incurable (lit: fit to be pronounced as hopeless).

Each of these different types, in its turn, should be carefully observed so as to determine whether it is a primary or an independent disease, or merely an accessory or sympathetic one, or the premonitory indication of an incipient distemper in its incubative stage.