Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c26.5

c26.5

The doctor anoints it with "a rough, sharp, bitter, stinging ointment to the end that the inflammation should be allayed". When the inflammation goes down and the wound becomes "sweet", he cuts into it with a lancet and burns it with caustic. When he has thus cauterized it, he is to prescribe "an alkaline wash and anoint it with some drug to the end that the wound might heal up" [iv, 1, 33]. A treatment of a boil is also described: the surgeon is "to have a lancet sharpened, or to have sticks put into the fire to be used as cauterizers or to have something ground on a grindstone to be mixed in a salt lotion", i.e. to apply "a stinging lotion" [iv, 2, 13]. Lastly, there is a reference to doctors administering "medicines by way of draughts or outward applications" [iv, 2, 17].