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Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.t2: § 45. The Practice of Dissection

Studies in the Medicine of Ancient India, Part I: Osteology, or the Bones of the Human Body c7.t2

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§ 45. The Practice of Dissection

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1. Allowing for the modifying causes explained in the preceding paragraph, the views of the early Indian anatomists are surprisingly accurate. This is due to the fact that they were accustomed to the practice of preparing the dead human body for actual examination, and that, therefore, their views were the direct result of an experimental knowledge of the skeleton. It is true that the Compendium of Charaka contains no reference whatever to the practice of human dissection; and it must, therefore, remain doubtful whether, and to what extent, that practice was observed in the school of Atreya. But there can be no doubt as to the practice being known and observed in the school of Suśruta; for his Compendium contains a passage which gives detailed instructions regarding the procedure to be adopted in preparing a dead body for anatomical examination.

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2. The passage in question occurs at the end of the fifth chapter of the Anatomical Section (*Śarīra Sthāna*) of the Compendium, and runs as follows:

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‘No accurate account of any part of the body, including even its skin, can be rendered without a knowledge of anatomy. Hence any one who wishes to acquire a thorough knowledge of anatomy must prepare a dead body, and carefully examine all its parts. For it is only by combining both direct ocular observation and the information of text-books that thorough knowledge is obtained. For this purpose one should select a body which is complete in all its parts. It should also be the body of a person who was not excessively old, nor who died

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of poison or of a protracted disease. Having removed all excrementitious matter from the entrails, the body should be wrapped in rush, or bast, or grass, or hemp, and placed in a cage. Having firmly secured the latter, in a hidden spot, in a river with no strong current, the body should be allowed to decompose. After an interval of seven days the thoroughly decomposed body should be taken out, and very slowly scrubbed with a whisk made of grass-roots, or hair, or bamboo, or bast. At the same time, every part of the body, great or small, external and internal, beginning with the skin, should be examined with the eye, one after the other, as it becomes disclosed in the course of the process of scrubbing.’ (Original Text in § 95.¹)

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¹ A German translation is given in Professor Jolly’s *Indian Medicine*, pp. 44, 45, in the *Cyclopedia of Indo-Aryan Research*. See also Dr. Wise’s *Hindu System of Medicine* (new issue), pp. 68, 69.

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3. The procedure, thus described, will doubtlessly enable the observer to recognize such structures as the clusters (*kūrca*) of small bones which make up the carpus and tarsus. But it would hardly suffice to enable him to discover bones lying interiorly; such, for example, as the ethmoid, sphenoid, vomer, and others in the interior of the head. As a matter of fact, we do not find these latter bones mentioned even in the more accurate list of Suśruta.

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