Page:The materia medica of the Hindus (1877).djvu/13

 wherein it is said that this work consists of five parts containing 120 chapters in all.* This is followed by a line to the effect that in the Uttara-tantra the remainder of the subject will be described. This last line, however, is evidently an interpolation, for if the original writer of the work had divided his book into six parts, he would not have said that it consisted of five parts. Besides the Uttara-tantra has a separate introduction in which the writer says it is compiled from the works of learned sages on the six divisions of Káyachikitsá or the treatment of general diseases, and from the work of Videhidhipa on Sálakya Sástra or diseases of the head, eyes, ears and nose.

If therefore we leave out of consideration the Uttara-tantra of Susruta, the work resolves itself mainly into a treatise on the principles of medicine as bearing on surgical diseases. It would thus appear that from a very early age, Hindu medical practitioners were divided into two classes, namely, Salya chikitsaka or surgeons and Káyachikitsaka or physicians. The surgeons were also called Dhanvantaryia sampradáya after Dhanvantari the reputed teacher of Susruta, or from Dhanvantari the mythological surgeon of the gods. This division existed before the work of Charaka was compiled, for as pointed out by Kavirája Brajendrakumar Sen Gupta, Charaka, like our modern physicians, refers his readers to surgeons when surgical aid is necessary, as for example in the passage quoted below. We may conclude, therefore, that Charaka is the oldest treatise on Medicine and Susruta the oldest treatise on Surgery now extant.

These two works, namely, Charaka and Susruta mark the highest phase of development of the Hindu system of Medicine