Hindu Medicine c8.179

c8.179

When Vesalius on the basis of his own experience with dissection found that Hippocrates held more correct views on the human organism than Galen, Western medicine awoke from its mediaeval torpor and moved away from Galenic traditionalism toward its unique achievements. Indian physicians, from the time that Suśruta had gained the reputation of a classic, agreed with Vesalius, at least in principle, that anatomy, securely based on autopsy by dissection, is requisite for true medical knowledge. In practice, however, Hindu anatomy was utterly unable to rise to the achievement one might have expected from the keen interest of the Hindu in the structure of the human body. Its chances were crippled by the more urgent claims of daily hygiene which, due to the subtropical climate, took precedence in the shape of moral injunctions and superstitious apprehensions that were propagated with emphatic authority.