Page:The materia medica of the Hindus (1877).djvu/12

 The work next in point of age, namely, Susruta, is more systematic in its arrangement, contains better details of anatomy and pathology, and shews on the whole a more advanced state of knowledge, both of general principles and of details of treatment.

The origin of the Susruta A'yurveda is thus described in the introduction to that work. Dhanvantari, the surgeon of heaven, descended upon earth in the person of Diva dása, king of Benares, for the purpose of teaching surgery along with the other branches of medical knowledge by which the gods preserve themselves from decline, disease and death. Susruta and other pupils besought him for instruction in surgical knowledge. Dhanvantari asked them what they wished to learn. The pupils replied "you will be pleased to make surgical knowledge the basis of your instruction, and to address your lectures to Susruta, who will take notes." Dhanvantari replied, "be it so. For surgery is the first and most important part of the A'yurveda, inasmuch as the healing of wounds was the first necessity for the medical art among the gods on account of their battles with the demons. Besides surgical treatment effects rapid cures, has recourse to instruments, mechanical appliances, caustics and the actual cautery and is intimately connected with the other branches of medical science." Accordingly we find that Susruta devotes the greater portion of his work to such subjects as anatomy, surgical instruments and operations, inflammation and surgical diseases, care of the king and his troops in the battle-field, obstetrical operations, poisons, etc.

The general diseases such as fever, diarrhoea, chest diseases, etc., are treated of in the last book called "Uttara-tantra," but there are reasons for believing, that this portion did not originally form a part of the work, but was subsequently added by some writer with the object of giving completeness to it. This is evident from several reasons. The very name Uttara "supplemental" is enough to suggest the idea of its being an after thought, if not a subsequent work. Had it been an integral part of the original treatise, it would have been included in the original scheme. But at the end of the first chapter of the first book an analysis of the contents of the entire work is given