Hindu Medicine c5.s3.42

c5.s3.42

Turning to the content of medical teaching, one finds astounding parallels. The Hindu theory of the six essences or qualities or flavors (rasa) is strikingly similar to the corresponding Greek concepts (glyky, liparon, stryphnon, halmyron, pikron, drimy). But, whereas in Hindu medicine these qualities form the basis of dietetics and pharmacology, this is not true of Greek medicine.²⁰ Furthermore, Hindu and Greek physicians concerned themselves with the theory of humors. In India originally, that is before 700 B. C., the number of humors appears to have been restricted to three, while the fourth one, blood, was added later in the works of Caraka and Suśruta. The assumption of an influence of Greek medicine on that of the