Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c2.2

c2.2

Probably it will come as a surprise to many, as it did to myself, to discover the amount of anatomical knowledge which is disclosed in the works of the earliest medical writers of India. Its extent and accuracy are surprising, when we allow for their early age—probably the sixth century before Christ—and their peculiar methods of definition. In these circumstances the interesting question of the relation of the Medicine of the Indians to that of the Greeks naturally suggests itself. The possibility, at least, of a dependence of either on the other cannot well be denied, when we know as an historical fact that two Greek physicians, Ktesias, about 400 B. C., and Magasthenes about 300 B. C., visited, or resided in, Northern India.