The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c12.s3.37

c12.s3.37

[57] The wind associated with phlegm and bile and even the wind alone can produce the "convulsion-producer" (*ākṣepaka*) and another, the fourth is born of the traumatisms.² [58] The "tension-producer" which has abortion for its cause, or which occurs because of haemorrhage, or which has the traumatisms as cause, is not cured. [59] When the wind, excessively excited, attains the vessels going downwards along with those going horizontally and those which go high in the body, [60] then, releasing the links of articulations on one side, it injures the side and the best of practitioners call him "affected on the side" (hemiplegia). [61] The one who is tormented by the wind and whose entire half-body is paralysed and insensible, (he) falls³ and even loses life. [62] It is known that the side injured by pure wind⁴ is the most difficult to cure, the curable is that which is in relation with another (element of trouble), and the incurable is that which brings atrophy in its wake. [63] The wind excited can climb from its seat to the heart and the head, it torments the temples and can cause convulsions in limbs and can also bend them. [64] With eyes closed, without any movement, or with eyes fixed, one whimpers, without breath, or one can breathe with difficulty, with consciousness abolished. [65] One can be in one's normal state when the heart is freed and one swoons when it is enveloped (in the wind) by the wind accompanied by phlegm, one should know it to be *apatantraka*.¹ [66] As against sleeping during daytime, in one posture², in one position, of one look in an abnormal sense³ the one that is enveloped in phlegm provokes torticolis (*manyāstambha*). [67] In pregnant women, in parturition, in children, old men and the weak⁴, in the case of the diminution of blood, the one who cries aloud and masticates hard objects too much, [68] laughs, yawns, and due to weight, due even to an unequal level⁵, going to the head, the nose, the lips, the chin, the forehead, the junctions of the eyes⁶, [69] the wind torments the visage and engenders thereafter facial paralysis (*ardita*). Half of the face becomes twisted and even the neck gets twisted, [70] the head deviates, there is liming of speech (Aphasia) derangement of the eyes, etc. and suffering on the same side of the neck in the chin and in the teeth. [71] The one who has horripilation in the beginning, trembling, eye-trouble, wind going up, sleep (anaesthesia) and pain in the skin, seizing of the muscular mass of the neck and of the jaws, the experts in diseases call his (trouble) the disease "*ardita*".⁷ [72] The one who is weakened, whose eyes do not blink, whose speech is continually limy¹, his ardita is not cured assuredly as also if he is three years old and of the one who trembles. [73] The tendon of the heel and that of the toe which is tormented by the wind can retain the extension of the thigh; this is what is called “sciatica” (grdhrasī). [74] The tendon of the palm and of the fingers, in the back in the region of the arm, diminishes the function of the arms; this is what is known as “brachial paralysis” (viśvācī). [75] The swelling in the centre of knee, due to the wind and to the blood, very painful is the “jackal’s head”², massive like the shout of the jackal. [76] When the wind happens to sit in the hips and causes the tendon of the thigh to convulse³, then the man can become lame and, following the death of the two thighs, become paraplegical (paṅgu). [77] The one whose legs shake while walking and who walks like a lame person, one should know him as the “lame because of sinewy fasciculia” (kalaya-khañja), whose ligaments of articulations are loose. [78] When the foot is placed in an irregular manner, the wind can produce pains; it should be known that it is the “thorn of the wind” (vātakaṇṭaka) which has its seat in the ankle.