The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c6.136

c6.136

Nosology studies the symptoms of diseases and thereby is related to observation, but it tries to interpret these symptoms as a function of the system of the physiology of the three elements. Its principal aim is to determine the etiology or, as it is known in the Ayurvedic texts, the nidāna, the occasion when troubles arise. This occasion, determined by the time, the regimen, the behaviour or such other cause, consists in the excitation or the slowing down of the one or several of these elements. Diagnosing does not consist of only recognising a disease but also of a judgement concerning the rôle exercised by the mind, the bile or the phlegm. A haemorragic fever will come from rakta-pitta, from "blood and bile"; from the bile because it is hot and from the blood because it appears and it overflows. Descriptions are given concerning all the supposed manifestations of the excess or the absence of each of the three doṣas, or of the combinations of any two among these when excited or of the concourse (sannipāta) of the three.