Studies in the Medicine, of Ancient India Osteology Or the Bones of the Human Body, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

Download or read book Studies in the Medicine, of Ancient India Osteology Or the Bones of the Human Body, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint) written by A. F. Rudolf Hoernle and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Studies in the Medicine, of Ancient India Osteology or the Bones of the Human Body, Vol. 1 Our knowledge of the Medicine known to the ancient Indians is at present extremely limited. I was made painfully aware of this fact in the course of preparing my edition of the two old Indian medical tracts preserved in the well-known Bower Manuscript of the fifth century A. D. The exigencies of that edition led me to a closer study of Indian Medicine, and the present treatise on its osteological doctrines is one of the firstfruits of that study. Probably it will come as a surprise to many, as it did to myself, to discover the amount of anatomical knowledge which is disclosed in the works of the earliest medical writers of India. Its extent and accuracy are surprising, when we allow for their early age - probably the sixth century before Christ - and their peculiar methods of definition. In these circumstances the interesting question of the relation of the Medicine of the Indians to that of the Greeks naturally suggests itself. The possibility, at least, of a dependence of either on the other cannot well be denied, when we know as an historical fact that two Greek physicians, Ktesias, about 400 B. C., and Megasthenes about 300 B. C., visited, or resided in, Northern India. No satisfactory knowledge of human anatomy can be attained without recourse to human dissection. Of the practice of such dissection in ancient India we have direct proof in the medical compendium of Susruta, and it is indirectly confirmed by the statements of Charaka. It is worthy of note, however, that in the writings of neither of these two oldest Indian medical writers is there any indication of the practice of animal dissection. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.