Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.s3.t8.10

c7.s3.t8.10

2. Suśruta looked upon the sclerotic coat of the eyeball (Fig. 1) as made of cartilage; and as he counted cartilages as tender, or immature bones (taruṇa), he included the two eyeballs among the bones of the skeleton (§ 30). Ātreya-Charaka, on the other hand, excluded them, not because he knew them to be non-cartilaginous, but probably because the prepared skeleton would ordinarily be deprived of them. As a matter of fact, the sclerotic is not made of cartilage, but of ‘connective tissue with elastic fibres’;¹ but to the untrained eye the two substances are so nearly alike that the mistake of a primitive anatomist, such as Suśruta, may be easily understood.