The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c15.38

c15.38

The first chapter enumerates the signs to be considered in a patient or with reference to him to know the time left to him for living. The anomaly (*vikṛti*) of which he is the victim, is of three types: (1) *lakṣaṇa-nimitta*, “assigned by the types”, that is to say, signified and caused simultaneously² by the congenital structural types of the body; (2) *lakṣya-nimitta*, “assigned by the typifiable, that is to say, by the morbid manifestations, capable of being referred to nosological types, to individualised syndromes; (3) *nimittarūpa*, "conforming with the assigned ones", that is to say, with presages which occur and are thought to determine the consecutive trouble.¹ These are, then, more advanced theoretical views than those found in the manuals of the *Hippocratic Collection* concerning the prognostics as also in the Accadian manual. The chapter, thereafter, gives the unfavourable signs observable when the colour (of the skin, *varṇa*) and the voice (*svara*) of the patient are examined. That is the beginning of an explanation of objective symptoms which covers the two following chapters, while the fourth is devoted to a description of subjective symptoms.