The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c8.69.2

c8.69.2

Similarly, when a term of the Veda, is also found in the *Āyurveda*, one cannot be sure, *a priori* that it possessed the same sense in the Veda as it had in the *Ayurvedic* texts. Here it may be pointed out that the possibilities of the evolution of senses should not be exaggerated. *Lepra* [in Greek] denoted all sorts of non-classified cutaneous ailments, whereas leprosy today is an individualised disease, defined by a certain group of symptoms and it is bacteriologically characterised. Similarly *Asthma* denoted all sorts of breathlessness whereas asthma today is a dyspnoea of the expiratory type coming on by fits and characterised by the cytological formula of expectoration. But asthma and leprosy still remain the ailments whose essential manifestations are respectively respiratory and cutaneous. If, therefore, in ignorance of the exact sense which the Greeks gave to the word *lepra*, the sense of "leprosy" as known to the modern doctors, were given to it, one would be ascribing to the Greeks an exact knowledge which they did not at all possess. But if one were to be content with the supposition that among the Greeks *lepra* signified a serious cutaneous disease, that will be quite exact.