Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Hindu medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![as that manifested by European sojourners in India. The reason of this is obvious. The community generally is an educated one, and many of its members from the vicissitudes incidental to an Indian life, whether in its civil, military, or planting capacities, are so often exposed to the influence of disease, to accidents from flood and field, and to various mishaps and mischances, far removed from medical aid and attendance, as to render a little knowledge of medicine and surgery not only a valuable but a tolerably general acquisition. Few Sportsmen and Indigo Planters are without their medical reminiscences, sometimes of a ludicrous, but far more frequently of a sad and melancholy character; and the time is not far removed when the military and medical charge of small detachments devolved upon the gallant Subaltern in command, aided by a compounder picked up for the nonce, and as ignorant of the rudiments as was the renowned Japhet himself, when first placed under the charge of the sagacious Cophagus, and in the companionship of the facetious Timothy. The first contact with disease in a tropical form is well cal- culated to startle the novice. Its deadly grasp and giant strides —the ruddy health of the morning followed by the pallor and collapse of the evening—the rapid death of the victim of cho- lera, fever, and the other plagues and pestilences of the jungle and the marsh, enforce an attention not easily called into exis- tence in the more favored regions of the fair earth. An acute observer has remarked, that “ every one desires to live as long as he can. Every one values health ‘ above all gold and treasure. ’ Every one knows that as far as his own indivi- dual good is concerned, protracted life and a frame of body sound and strong, free from the thousand pains which flesh is heir to, are unspeakably more important than all other earthly] objects, because life and health must be secured before any possible result of any possible circumstance can be of conse- quence to him. Possessed then of this knowledge, and knowing the class of readers we are about to address, as well as being anxi- ous that all departments of literature and science which appertain to the gorgeous East, should find a fitting place in the Calcutta Review, need we apologize for introducing to their notice and consideration the subject of “ Hindu Medicine.” The first question that demands attention in an examina- tion of Hindu Medicine is its claim to a high degree of antiqui- ty, for upon this must rest its chief recommendations to pre- eminence over other systems which have obtained celebrity, and led to the present advanced state of the art and science of medicine in modern Europe.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22372027_0004.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
