MEDICINE. The medical art, amongst the natives of the south and east of Asia, has had the knowledge of western Europe added to it during the 16th and up to the 19th centuries, and from Europe to the Pacific Ocean. In Egypt, in Africa, in Turkey, and Persia, and in the British, French, Po'rtuguese, Dutch, and Spanish East Indies are many medical schools, and• numerous European, American, and native medical men teaching and practising their profession according to the doctrines of the schools of Europe. Amongst the Hindus, the art of medicine has been carefully studied from the most ancient times, and books on the subject have a large circulation. Of these, the Ayur Veda, which is reckoned a portion of the fourth or Atharva Veda, is considered the oldest treatise and the highest standard. It is said to have consisted originally of 100 sections, each containing 1000 stanzas, but fragments only are now procurable. The works of, Charaka and Stisruta, who are said to have lived about the time of Rama, are also regarded as of great author ity; and Agastya, a Tamil writer, is fabled to have written upwards of 50 treatises on medicine, alchemy, and magic, but some of those attributed to him have been composed after the arrival of Europeans in India ; and there are upwards of 120 Tamil works on medicine, some of them of con siderable size. Amongst the Hindus of the 19th century, medical science is, however, much in the same state as it was in. Greece iu thd time of Hippocrates. The Greeks seem to have derived from India their systems of philosophy and medicine, and Hippocrates and Plato taught that fire, air, earth, and water were the elemental constituents of our bodies. The views which Pythagoras and Plato entertained of health and disease precisely accord with those of Plato and the Hindu Susruta, and the Hindu system of therapeutics is much the same as that of Galen, who taught that the properties of all medicines are derived from their elementary or cardinal qualities,—heat, cold, moisture, and dryness,—and taught that if a disease be hot or cold a medicine with the opposite qualities is to be prescribed. A general belief in the hot and cold inherent qualities of medicines at this day pervades the whole of India, and the most illiterate labourer, as well as the most learned pandit, explains the action of medicine on this Galenical principle only. Some Hindu medical men are able and trust worthy, but the great mass of the native practi tioners have not yet been taught anything of the science of Europe, and have not the slightest knowledge of their art, even according to their own authors. Nevertheless their materia medica
is sufficiently voluminous, and their rules fo! diagnosis, as laid down by their ancient writers, define and distinguish symptoms with great accuracy. Their authors have also paid great attention to regimen and diet, and have a number of works on the food and general treatment suited to the complaint, with a variety of works on the medical treatment of diseases, containing much absurdity with much that is of value. Their value of experience and of a thorough education is also proved by many of their proverbs. The ?uham madans of Persia and India tell us, Nim hakim, khatra - i - idn, With a half - educated physician there is danger to your life ; which is the English proverb, A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.' A familiar Tamil proverb warns that he only can be• a good doctor who has killed ten, and a Shighalese proverb is that he who has killed thousand is half a But both the Tamil and Singhalese proverbs simply mean that there is as yet no regular teaching for their physicians, who must acquire their know ledge by their own series of successes and failures. The kachabonda is a herbalist. The vidyan is a learned Hindu practising medicine, the bakim of the Muhammadan is a learned man, and the tabib is a physician. In Southern India the native medical practitioners claim to be either of the Yunani i.e. Grecian school of medicine, or of the Misri, i.e. Egyptian. The Misri is sometimes designated the Suryani or Syrian school. Most of the Muhammadan physicians are of the Yunani school, and the generality of the Hindu physicians follow the Misri school. The Yunani physicians use chiefly vegetable drugs in their treatment of the sick, and with them bleeding is a suitable line of practice. The Misri physicians, on the other hand, chiefly use oxides of metals, sulphur, cinnabar, or sulphide of mercury, and orpiment or sulphate of arsenic ; but these drugs are first combined, by the action of fire, with some other mineral substance, otherwise they are regarded as noxious. Also, they consider bleeding as never admissible. Every Muhammadan 'gentle man necessarily knows something of the healing art. The medical profession, therefore, ranks next to the clerical in point of respectability ; and so highly is the study thought of, that even royalty itself will occasionally condescend to dose its subjects. There were in 1872 in Madras several men of noble family who regularly gave medical advice gratis.