The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.176

c8.176

Moreover, whether *kilāsa* has changed or not changed its sense between the *Atharvaveda* and classical medicine, in the hymn translated above, it is considered only as a disorder of the coloration of the skin due to malefices and it is sought to be suppressed by a tineture and by incantations. We know well that achromy often exists along with leprosy but the Vedic sorcerer limits himself to stating the superficial symptom and to perceiving at the most that it can hold on to deeper lesions. There is nothing to attest that he conceived it as a simple manifestation of a polymorphic clinical entity and as a complex one like the one called “leprosy”.