The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c4.16

c4.16

Already numerous Ayurvedic drugs have been examined from the point of view of their pharmocological properties. The cases of their application are not equally well-known, because of the difficulties often present in the identification of diseases, enumerated by modern nosology, in the descriptions furnished by Ayurvedic texts. These texts have, in fact, classified a large number of diseases in a different manner, according to the analogy of the symptoms, confusing, for example, under the nomenclature of *jvara*, “fever”, different diseases, in which fever is only a secondary manifestation. On other occasions, and quite frequently, these texts distinguish several varieties in a single disease, according to whether certain symptoms are attributed to the predominance of one of the three morbid elements (*tridoṣa*), theoretically and hypothetically distinguished by them but whose real presence cannot be found by modern medicine.