Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s2.2

c6.s2.2

It appears that Indian medical men (with whatever names they may be termed at the end of the eighteenth century) made considerable use of surgical techniques in different parts of India. According to Colonel Kyd in ‘Chirurgery (in which they are considered by us the least advanced) they often succeed, in removing ulcers and cutaneous irruptions of the worst kind, which have baffled the skill of our surgeons, by the process of inducing inflammation and by means directly opposite to ours, and which they have probably long been in possession of.²¹ Dr H. Scott (Chapter XVII) seems to corroborate the above and further reports the prevalence of plastic surgery in Western India, in his letters to the President of the Royal Society, London. In 1972, he states: