Indian Medicine (Medicin), translated by C. G. Kashikar c11.25

c11.25

Bad milk causes various diseases which an expert physician knows by symptoms. If the child has got pain in any part of body, it always touches the same again and again, and cries if others touch it. In headache it closes the eyes and cannot hold the head straight. In heart-disease it bites the tongue and lips, breathes with difficulty, closes the fists and looks upwards. If the bowels are defective, there is retention of urine and constipation, vomiting, flatulence, tremor in body, the child becomes pale, bites mother's breast, its back becomes crippled and its belly swells. In diseases of bladder the urine is retained with pain and there is thirst, uneasiness, rolling of eyes and senselessness. If the whole body is suffering, the child cries unnaturally ( Su 3.10.33-36; AS 6.2.277; AHr 6.2.5-8 ). Cough, difficulty in breathing, fever and vomiting are caused if the suckling baby drinks excessively thick milk from too full a breast from which no milk comes out. Therefore, such milk should be avoided (Su 3.10.29; AS 6.1.172). The bad milk of the mother or the nurse should be "purified" by different medicines. An emetic and purgative are particularly recommended; the patient must also take a specific diet (Car 4.8.49f.). Medicine is given to the mother and the child if the child is fed only with mother's milk or with mother's milk and rice. It is given to the child if it is fed only with rice. The child takes the medicine mixed with butter or sugar, or it is applied to the mother's breast as a paste which the child sucks, or the lip of the child (kṣīrapa) is smeared with it. In fever the child should not be allowed to the breast in order to pacify its thirst. Purgatives, enemata, and vomitings are also inadmissible except in danger of life. In certain cases nourishing and perspiring remedies, anointings, cold baths etc. are prescribed. Thus a painful swelling of the navel, denoted as tuṇḍī should be treated with hot poultice, the inflammation of the anus with ointment and medicines of rasāñjana (Su 3.10.37-44; AS 6.2.177; AHr 6.2.9-19). Particularly bad is the disease kṣīrālasaka ("milk-tympany"): the child gets diarrhoea which is watery, bad smelling and frothy, passes white-yellow and sticky urine, suffers from fever, nausea, thirst, vomiting, flatulence in stomach etc. The treatment chiefly consists of emetic to be given to the wet-nurse or mother as well as to the child (AS 6.2.128f.; AHr 6.2.20-24 ).