The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c13.2

c13.2

ANALOGIES of the same type as those that have been noted between Indian medical texts and the Hippocratic manual *On Breaths*, being expressions of ancient Greek pneumatic conceptions, have already been pointed out between a theory taught in the *Timaeus* and the Indian doctrine of pathology. Armand Delpeuch¹ has been struck on finding in the *Timaeus* in the form of explanation, quite aberrent in comparison with Hippocratic medicine, the classical teaching of Ayurveda, whereby diseases are provoked by the wind, bile and phlegm. But he believed that he could refer this teaching back to the Veda and thought that Plato had received it from the Pythagorean tradition, Pythagoras being reported to have searched for a medical philosophy in India.