The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c12.s3.31

c12.s3.31

[37] When it is enveloped in phlegm, heaviness in the lower part of the body. When the diffused blood is enveloped in bile, convulsions, lassitude. [38] All the limbs are heavy and there is the stiffness of the points of bones, (such is) the symptomatology (liṅga) when the diffused breath is enveloped in phlegm and there is also the paralysis of movements. [39]¹ Generally, in delicate persons, in those who take undue amounts of nourishment and live beyond measure, because of excessive fatigue due to women, due to spirituous drinks and exercises which are the paths of ills², [40] following a deviation in the regimen of the seasons and irregular use of fatty bodies, etc., the windy blood gets excited in those who are chaste as also in the corpulent ones. [41] The one who goes with elephants, horses, camels and others, has his wind excited because of the habitual causes (of excitation), because of nourishment of vegetables, etc. pungent, hot, acid and caustic edibles as also because of heatings, etc. (becoming) too habitual. [42] Rapidly the blood gets corrupted and blocks the path of the wind. This wind, immediately rendered violently excited by the blocking of its route, can immediately trouble the blood a great deal. [43] The latter, mixed with the wind, disturbed by its predominance, is called “Windy Blood”. Similarly bile mixed with disturbed blood, disturbed phlegm mixed with disturbed blood. [44] Fearing the touch, suffering from pricking pain and drying up, from sleep (anaesthesia), are the feet because of the windy blood. Because of bile and blood they have a violent inflammation, are extremely hot, have red swelling and are smooth. [45] They are pruriginous, white and cold, swollen, inflated and impotent when the blood is disturbed by phlegm. And the ailments, when the blood is disturbed by all, make manifest in the feet, their individual aspects. [46] As premonitory symptoms, they are soft, perspiring, cold (or) possess opposite characteristics, have a bad colour, a pricking pain, sleep (anaesthesia), heaviness, heat. [47] When it (the blood) has reached the sole of the feet, sometimes also the palm of the hands, like rat-poison¹, it infiltrates the body. [48] When it has spread up to the knees, and when it is an effusion, being fragmented (that is to say, in the form of spread-out spots, petechiae) and when it is accompanied by complications like those of the weakening of the breath and of the flesh, [49] blood can become incurable (or) curable after several years. But when excited wind invades all the vessels, [50] then by a sudden attack it causes lively convulsions all over the body occurring at all moments, and as this convulsion is caused at all times, it is traditionally called "convulsor" (*ākṣepaka*), [51] is called "tension-producer" (*apātānaka*)², the one which makes descend (*pātayati*), by intervals, if the wind associated with phlegm violently occupies the (vessels). [52] The one which makes it hard like a stick is serious, that is the "tension-producer like a stick" (*daṇḍapātānaka*, upright tetanus). When it seizes the jaws very strongly (trismus) use of nourishment becomes difficult. [53] The one that makes the body bend like a bow draws its name from the hardness of the bow (*dhanuḥstambha*). It has its seat in the fingers, in ankles, abdomen, heart, chest and throat. [54] When the wind, impetuous, causes the convulsive expansion of the tendons, (the patient) has his eyes fixed, the jaw rigid, the side twisted (pleurothotonos), and (he) vomits phlegm. [55] When the man is bent like a bow inwards, then the wind, powerful, provokes its "contraction inwards" (emprosthotonos), [56] and if the tendons of outside¹ are found in the expansions it provokes the "outward contraction" (opisthotonos). The experts call incurable the one that causes the chest, the hips and the thighs to incurvate.