Hindu Medicine c5.s3.44

c5.s3.44

Hindus, at least in this particular instance, seems the more plausible since the fourth humor was never as important as were the other three. Yet the four-humor theory, in Greek medicine, came to the fore at the time of Galen and his successors, while previously its rôle had been insignificant.²¹ Even more important, the Hindu interpretation of the various humors differed considerably from the Greek one. This can be shown of bile, and even more clearly of wind or breath.²² Finally, Hindu medicine did not recognize diseases of the brain; the brain was not regarded as the central organ of thought and consciousness. Thus, the truly startling discoveries of the Greeks were not accepted by the Hindus, and the coincidences, upon closer inspection, also reveal great discrepancies. It is, therefore, safer to suggest an "independent parallel growth and development of ideas, as they could easily come about with regard to the same