The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c4.1

c4.1

THE WORK ON HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE which continues actively and has, during the last few years, helped produce the thesis of Mr. Bourgey at Paris and Mr. R. Joly at Liege is chiefly interesting for the history of the scientific spirit of the Antiquity and for ancient Greek Philology. On its side, the history of the Ayurveda reaches into the same Antiquity but concerns something always modern. The Ayurvedic medicine is still alive. Some attack it as the anachronic survival of a once glorious past but unworthy of being ranked with new scientific achievements. Others defend it with a conviction and ingeniousness which do harm to its cause. In fact, some support the view that it is fully worthy of figuring in the front rank of modern medicines and even that it is the only one worthy of the front rank. In their view it already contains all the useful discoveries of not only the present-day medicine but also of medicine in future. It is the complete science, revealed once for all for the good of the feeble humanity and does not require any research and trials of present-day science. All that the latter discovers with a great deal of effort, had not only been foreshadowed but had been written down in its books. It is because we cannot understand them properly and cannot understand their formulae because of the condensed expression of the truth, that we always look for the detailed solutions of physiological and therapeutic problems which had been, in general, fully solved by Ayurveda.