Hindu Medicine c5.s3.55

c5.s3.55

Such a pharmacology by its very nature must be conservative. No item can be omitted once it has been approved by tradition, since it may be just this particular factor that brings about success. If the old mixture proves ineffective, new ingredients are simply added. It is in this way that "the amazing intricacy of traditional recipes comes about in the course of time." Tradition is a burden that grows "more and more cumbersome, not to be lightened by any speculative effort, but apt to be rendered still more ponderous through theorizing, and a certain sophistication." The stubborn adherence to tradition which guided Hindu pharmacology like "a sort of Ariadne's thread," is also the main source of the shortcomings of all traditional knowledge, in so far as it deals with the visible and tangible realm of things and not with the soul and its highest goal, transcendent reality, wisdom and truth beyond the sciences. Traditional medicine and science, outside the pale of modern research, possessed no method for critically sifting by the test of experiment the various resources offered by minerals, vegetables and animals in the way of drugs. The achievement of