Hindu Medicine c7.215

c7.215

According to Suśruta, a Hindu adept of the medical profession should belong to one of the three Aryan upper castes of Hindu society. He should be young and healthy, full of energy, bodily strength and endurance. He should be of a good character, pious, well-mannered and clean. His temper should be calm and self-controlled. Besides, he should be endowed with keen senses. In his diagnosing he will have to rely to a very great extent on the impressions of his senses, since, for him, the vast apparatus of modern physics, chemistry, bacteriology and biology is not available. He will have to taste all sorts of stuff with his tongue, drugs as well as the secretions of the patient, to ascertain their nature.