The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.161

c8.161

Isolated Morbid Phenomena:— The majority of other ailments which are named in the Ṛgveda and the Atharvaveda are isolated morbid phenomena. No effort is made for discerning across the groupings of these phenomena, the diseases of which they represent only the symptoms. In the presence of patients suffering from cephalitis, vomitting and constipation, we are used to evoke immediately the diagnosis of meningitis. The Vedic healer saw therein three disorders occurring simultaneously or, if he knew that these disorders were interconnected because of their co-existence and were connected with others which do not fail to accompany them, the disease that caused them to occur together was not determined for him and did not constitute for him a definite clinical entity. Behind the concrete lesions and evidently morbid accidents, he did not individualise the syndroms.