The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c11.4

c11.4

During the period of the most ancient Vedic texts, between 1500 and 1000 B.C., appear numerous allusions to diseases, to remedies and to limbs of the body or to its constitutive elements. There is already a number of terms which will be found later in the medical texts, and the sense they have therein most of the time helps us to understand the ancient passages where they occur. But the names of explicable diseases refer to affections with evident manifestations and not to doctrinally individualised syndromes. This shows that during the Vedic period pathology, although possessing a rich nomenclature, was not yet scientifically developed. The therapeutics is magical or rudimentary and does not yet prescribe treatments conceived and applied following scientific theories, as will be the case with classical medical texts. These later texts have preserved, only in an extremely reduced measure, the heritage of this Vedic therapeutics.