Page:The Surgical Instruments of the Hindus Vol 1.djvu/14

vi and it might be said with greater truth about the works of early Sanskrit authors, the comment of a learned critic about the style of Thucydides, the famous historian,—"the most obvious and characteristic of his peculiarities is an endeavour to express as much matter as possible in as few words as possible, to combine many thoughts into one, and always to leave the reader to supply something of his own. Hence his conciseness often becomes obscure." I could not form any idea as to the shape of some of the surgical instruments from the descriptions given in the text books, and the commentators are often silent on those passages. But when I read the accounts of similar instruments in Greek and Roman literature, my difficulties at once cleared up. We know with what brilliant results comparative mythology and comparative philology have been studied of late years, and I am sure that a comparative study of medical science by scholars will lead to interesting discoveries. So I have added descriptions of the instruments according to the Greeks, Romans and Arabs at the end of the descriptions given in Sanskrit books: the former serving as commentaries on the latter.

Seventhly, in the accounts of historians, travellers and pilgrims from foreign countries, may be found notices of medical science, as they saw it practised during their sojourn in a country, and such impressions, if properly collated, may bear impartial testimony to the progress of the science at the time. Again, we must enquire if the original treatises of medicine can be proved to have been translated into different languages and whether the remedial agents of a country can be traced in the Pharmacopœias of different nations. Thus we