The Materia Medica of the Hindus, compiled from Sanskrit Medical Works c3.24

c3.24

The treatise called Chakradatta-sangraha, describes in detail the treatment of diseases arranged in the order in which they are described in the Nidána of Mádhava Kara, and to which it is a companion volume. Its author deals chiefly with vegetable drugs. He gives a few prescriptions containing mercury, in which this metal is mixed with sulphur and vegetable substances, but the preparations of mercury produced by sublimation and chemical combination with salts, etc., were unknown to him. It would appear, therefore, that mercury was just coming into use in his time. He does not mention opium, so that his work, and consequently the Nidàna, must have been composed before the introduction of this drug into India by the Mussulmans.