Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s2.t4.15

c7.s2.t4.15

6. The treatment of the pelvic bones by Suśruta and Charaka respectively shows the former's advance in anatomical knowledge. That Charaka took the sacrum and coccyx to constitute a single bone is shown by the circumstance (infra, cl. 7) of Vāgbhaṭa I adopting that count from him. Suśruta's more intimate knowledge of the structure of the pelvis is shown not only by the fact that he recognized the separate existence of the sacrum and coccyx, but also by the fact that he realized the peculiar shape of the sacrum as being triangular (§ 60, cl. 3), and especially of its first vertebra as resembling that of the fifth lumbar, on which account, in fact, he counted the first sacral rather as a lumbar vertebra.