Indian Medicine

The present work aims at an orderly, and at the same time historical treatment of the Ayurvedic system of medicine. It is an English rendering of Julius Jolly's Medizin in German originally published in 1901, and supplemented by the translator with bibliography and notes covering the literary activity in the field during the next fifty years. It deals with sources, Physicians and Therapy, Theoretical conceptions, Theory of Development and Gynaecology, Internal and External Diseases, Diseases of the Head, Nervous and Mental Diseases and Toxicology. The book is a model of critical research condensed with the utmost brevity of words without omitting any important detail of fact or text bearing on the history of Indian Medicine. A historical approach as has been made in writing this book is a dire necessity for Ayurvedic research work—both literary and practical. The history of Ayurveda indeed claims a better position in the general history of Medicine. The conceptions of the Physicians of ancient India have played a great role in the general culture of India and have entered in many Philosophical doctrines as the basic elements. The Indian Medicine has played in Asia the same role as the Greek Medicine in the West. It has spread in Indo-China, Indonesia, Tibet, Central Asia and Japan exactly as the Greek Medicine has done in Europe and the Arab countries. It was studied by the Greeks, the Arabs, the Portuguese and the Dutch, and in the nineteenth century it secured a place in the scientific literature of Europe. Thus the study of Indian Medicine has taken its place in the classical Science. Through the progress of historical studies it has become possible to consider with greater precision the correspondence of Indian Medicine with those of Greek, Iran, Islam and China. Pharmacological value of Ayurvedic drugs has also been fixed. On this background the study of Indian Medicine presented in this book will be profitable for a deeper understanding of the history of Medicine in general and of Indian Medicine in particular.