The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.120

c8.120

³ The abcesses and the inflammations of the cellular tissue are designated in the AV., VI, 127,1; IX,8,20, as vidradhá, in classical medicine vidradhi which includes the common abcesses and the purulent visceral collections. The difference between jāyānya and vidradhá seems to lie in that the first word designates all sorts of suppurant ailments, hot or cold, accompanied by local emaciation and the second, the collection of severe abcesses. In talking of the apacits, Bloomfield and V. Henry call it quite often “pustuls”, although they make of it, rightly, the scrofulous disease, the scrofula. The use of the word “pustuls” not only does not come up to reality but also does not conform even with the idea they have of the disease in question.