Page:The materia medica of the Hindus (1877).djvu/8

 heating effects on the system, and their special influence on the humours which are supposed to support the machinery of life, namely, air, bile, phlegm and blood. These details are not so much the result of observation and experience as the outcome of an erroneous system of pathology and therapeutics. I have, therefore, selected for notice such portions of the texts as relate to the practical use of the drugs and their tangible effects on the system. This latitude in departing from the texts, has enabled me to bring together in one place, useful hints regarding the uses of particular drugs from different Sanskrit treatises on therapeutics. I have occasionally added remarks on their history and economic uses where I thought I had new or additional information to afford on the subject. These remarks are for the most part based on personal knowledge.

In describing the preparation and uses of medicines employed in different diseases I have confined myself strictly to the texts of the authors whom I have quoted, and have given the original Sanskrit verses in foot-notes. I have not incorporated with them the results of modern researches on indigenous drugs, or my personal experience of their use. These I have reserved for a future essay. My object here has been to show the extent of knowledge attained by Hindu physicians by their own practice and observation.

In the selection of the prescriptions for illustrating the uses of medicines in individual diseases I have, as a rule, given preference to such recipes as are commonly used by native physicians. Where there are several well-known medicines of similar composition and use, I have described in detail only one, and given under it the names of the others with a brief allusion to their composition. My main object in including the names of the principal or generally known preparations of the Hindu Materia Medica in the text and index, is to enable the practitioner of European Medicine to get an idea of their nature and composition when he comes to hear of their having been used by patients who had been under native treatment before coming under his care, as is very often the case. The list is by no means