Indian Medicine (Medicin), translated by C. G. Kashikar c12.1

c12.1

§ 50. Children's Diseases¹ :— Even the Vedic medicine² contains information about children's medicine. Thus an incantation against worms in children is found in AV 5.23, cf. Kausika sūtra 29.22 f. where the lower end of a mortar-pestle (musala) is heated on fire and then passed to and fro three times on the palate of the child seated on the mother's lap to ward off the worms. The fourteenth chapter of the second medical work of the Bower MS deals exclusively with the treatment of children's diseases (kumārabhṛtya) and contains recipes for various kinds of diarrhoea, vomiting, constipation, worms, jaundice, throat-diseases, skin-diseases, being possessed by a male or female demon, fever, cough etc. Jīvaka cited therein ( 2.1081, cf. Hoernle's remark ) as an authority was a contemporary of Buddha and is called the "physician of children" ( komārabhacca )