Indian Medicine (Medicin), translated by C. G. Kashikar c9.10

c9.10

§ 20. Diagnosis :— The physician should go to the house of the patient at favourable signs, enter the house and observe, palpate and question him (Su. 1. 10. 4; AHr. 1. 1. 21). All five senses must be set to work at the medical examination. Thus in an abscess he should feel with the ear the bustling overflow of the air with frothy blood, the sounds in the entrails, the crack of the joint, changes in the voice etc.; with the eye the decrease and increase of body, colour, form and extent of the same, vitality etc.; with the taste the various tastes of urine in diabetes and other ailments, the bad taste in the body by the creeping of lice on the same, and the sweet taste by the creeping of ants etc.; with the touch, cold or heat, smoothness or roughness, softness or hardness and other qualities of skin in fever, jaundice and other diseases; with the smell, the smell coming out of the body especially at the approach of death. By questioning the patient one knows his native place (or home), his condition, caste, mode of living and diet, the origin of his disease, pains, vitality, appetite, the appearance or non-appearance of flatus, urine or stools, the duration of his disease etc. Much can be decided simply by inference (anumāna) (Su. 1. 10. 5 f.; Car 3.4).