Indian Medicine (Medicin), translated by C. G. Kashikar c9.29

c9.29

In the application of pañcakarman, sneha and sveda precede and they play a great role. Among the animal fats, ghee is the best and among vegetable fats, sesame oil is the best. One can eat the fat or oil either unmixed or with various additions like salt, flesh-broth, flesh, milk, whey, pap and others, or turn them into embrocations, plasters, enemeta, eye-ointments, spraying in the nose and ears and the like. In internal use, the full dose (uttamā mātrā) is to be taken by strong patients with good digestion and in swelling of the body, serpent-bite, erysipelas, madness, strangury, constipation; the medium dose in tumour, small blister, itch, leprosy and other skin-diseases, and by those who eat moderately and who are not very strong and are not constipated; small dose is to be taken by the aged or the children or by persons who are infirm or who have already taken a purgative or have weak digestion or are suffering for a long time from fever, diarrhoea or cough. Car 1.14 distinguishes 13 kinds of *sveda*: 1. *saṅkara-sveda*, fomenting with objects like cowdung, sand etc. made hot in cloth and placing them on the suffering part of the body. 2. *prastarasveda*, sweating by a bed of straw on which the objects are put loosely in a cloth. 3. *nāḍīsveda*, the steam-bath through a reed, one end of which is applied to the body while the other sticks to the boiling pot. 4. *pariṣeka*, bathing with warmed medicinal stuffs. 5. *avagāha*, bath in a cask with warm water and medicines. 6. *jentākasveda*, sweating in a sweating room which is made hot through an oven with many holes. 7. *aśmaghanasveda*, sweating by lying on a hot stone. 8. *karṣūsveda*, filling a ditch beneath the bed of the patient with fire. 9. *kuṭīsveda*, sweating by lying on a bed in a compact hut. 10. *bhūsveda*, lying on level ground, in other respects like 7. 11. *kumbhīsveda*, burying a pot filled with medicines below the bed of the patient and adding heated iron balls or pieces of stone. 12. *kūpasveda*, filling a wide ditch with dung which is kindled and on which the bed of the patient is placed when there is no smoke. 13. *holākasveda*, the bed is placed on a heap of burnt dung.