Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c6.s3.46

c6.s3.46

Among diseases¹⁰ we have mention of jaundice (paṇḍuroga) but no remedy is suggested.¹¹ The treatment for dysentery (lohitapakkhandikā) was a broth made of millet and wild rice, mixed with leaves sprinkled with water, without salt and spices. Irregular food was known to be one of the causes of dysentery.¹² And it was also recognised that there is no proper digestion of food without proper sleep;¹³ indigestion (ajiṇṇa), among other things, is due to over-eating from getting cold in the water.¹⁴ Milk mixed with a pungent drug, if drunk, was thought to ensure protection from getting cold in the water.¹⁵ Sisābādha or headache was known to be very obstinate, sometimes lasting for years together; and some medicinal herb, when ground on a slab and mixed with some water and then applied to the forehead, could heal the pain.¹ Symptoms of rheumatism—*Vātābādha*—were, among others, contraction of bodily parts and humping of the back, as the description of the goat (*meṇḍa*) and the dog (*sūna*) in the *Mahāummagga Jātaka*² shows. Constipation was another disease for which proper treatment seems to have been thought out. The patient had to take a dose of ghee, perhaps mixed with some medicine (*tikkhiṇa sappi*), as even to-day in place of castor-oil, butter-milk mixed with some ghee is used as a strong purgative. After taking this, the patient was not expected to talk or work much, but simply to lie down in bed. And the psychological aspect of diseases was also not lost sight of: the sickroom was well arranged to please the attention of the patient.³ Leprosy (*Kuṭṭhaṃ*)—stricken man had to be carefully nursed. The spot was washed, a salve anointed to it, and a bandage was put on it.⁴ Too much indulgence in sexual intercourse was recognised to be an evil bringing in its train various diseases—cough (*kāsa*) asthma (*sāsa*), bodily pain (*daraṃ*) and childishness (*bālyaṃ*) among others.⁵ The physicians first of all studied and diagnosed the case properly and then prescribed proper remedy for it. "It is the way of physicians," says the young physician of Benares just returned from Takkasilā, "first to learn whence the disease arises, then to make a remedy to suit."⁶ It was also recognised that mental sickness is incurable by physical treatment: it can only be cured by a psychological remedy.⁷ Eye-diseases were also cured.⁸