Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/53

 medical knowledge, but they were made at such a period of time, or under such conditions, that they could not have exerted an appreciable influence upon the development of medicine in ancient Greece,—certainly no such influence as was exerted by Assyria and Persia, and especially by Egypt. It therefore seems permissible to speak of the medicine of these more remote countries only incidentally, and not as an integral part of the series of centres of learning which made the medicine of ancient Greece the direct ancestor—if I may use such a term—of European medicine. In conformity with this idea it will be well to mention here briefly a few of the more important facts relating to the achievements of the physicians of the three countries named.

The most celebrated medical authors in India were Caraka, Súsruta and Vagbhata—"The ancient trinity," as they were called. Caraka probably lived during the early part of the Christian era, Súsruta during the fifth century, and Vagbhata not later than during the seventh century A. D. It is apparent, therefore, that none of the treatises written by these authors could have exerted the slightest influence upon the growth of medical knowledge in ancient Greece.

The crudeness of many of the conceptions held by these Hindu physicians concerning pathology is revealed in the following definition: "Health is the expression of the normal composition of the three elementary substances (air, mucus and bile) which play a vital part in the machinery of the human body, and it is also dependent upon the existence of normal quantitative relations between these three substances; and when the latter are damaged, or when they are abnormally increased or diminished, then disease of one kind or another makes its appearance." *