Hindu Medicine c8.78

c8.78

Nor is there a break, in this respect, between the attitude of Vedic antiquity and that of classic Hindu medicine, though in the latter the main constituents of the human body are treated primarily as elements instead of being addressed as divinities. Here, too, they are personified whenever it suits the purpose and situation of healing, that is, wherever medicine resorts to the irrational forms of suggestive treatment through magic as an indispensable supplement of rational procedures.