Hindu Medicine c7.163

c7.163

A primitive sort of surgery is as old as warfare; the man who knows how to inflict wounds with his weapons must also know how to treat them; and he needs somebody to assist him when he is wounded by similar weapons in the hands of the enemy. The surgeon Machaon, side by side with the priest and soothsayer Kalchas, is an indispensable figure on the heroic stage which Homer sets for the siege of Troy. There is literary evidence that surgery existed before Caraka’s time, but it seems to have been a special discipline, distinct from the science of health and longevity, and had not yet been merged into the encyclopedic tradition represented by Caraka’s compilation.