Hindu Medicine c8.121

c8.121

The power of the wind is paramount, in so far as it effects all sorts of movement in the organism, voluntary and involuntary. The wind pervades the whole body; in the manner of a pneumatic dispatch system, spreading throughout a town, it delivers all kinds of messages, materials and impulses from one part to another. By and large, its widely ramified network compares to the nervous system. Hindu authors frequently render "diseases of the wind" as "nervous diseases." When a person is wounded and bleeds to death, he is supposed to suffer a fatal loss of the vital air of his body. Conversely, the umbilical cord of the new-born baby is most carefully tied, lest the wind get into the child's belly, causing it to swell.⁷