A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century A.D. v1.c9.s2.101

v1.c9.s2.101

Although no direct historical evidence is available, we are not left entirely in the dark. Our author, at the very outset, names twenty seven alchemists from whose writings he derives his materials (p. 77), and later on, in the section on apparatus (p. 130), he quotes Rasārnava as a source of his information. Opium was not employed in medicine in his time nor is there any mention of Phiraṅgaroga, (lit. the disease of the Portuguese),¹ which was introduced into India about the middle of the 16th century, and the treatment of which by means of calomel and chob-chini