The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c13.23

c13.23

The explanation of certain diseases by the irruption of bile in blood is common to Plato and to Indian doctors who call this accident *rakta-pitta*, “blood-bile” (Suśruta, *Uttaratantra*, XIV) and attribute to it the origin of the spontaneous haemorrhages which occur principally in the course of acute diseases. It is probably because the idea has been conceived in the presence of the forms of grave icterus, relatively frequent in a tropical country and characterised both by jaundice and multiple haemorrhages. But the Platonic theory of the fibres of the blood does not appear to be found in Indian medicine.