instead of the end of the course of study. In addition to this, the pupil vows implicit obedience to his teacher, the practice of a voluntary and even ostentatious humility, and also that neither his beard nor his nails shall be cut during the period of his studies. When the noviciate's studies have been successfully completed, he receives the Rajah's authority to practise. The physician must be healthy, attired in clean and becoming raiment, kind and considerate to the sick, &c.-just the very requirements made by Hippocrates.

But the omens which the physician is directed to observe afford melancholy instances of an amount of superstition to which the "divine old man" of Cos was a stranger, or, rather, which he had the strength of mind to shake off for the most part. For example, it is held to be a bad omen if any person sneezes; if lizards are seen by the physician on leaving the house; or if corpses, jackals, or vessels of water are seen on the left. If the physician on quitting his patient should meet any one carrying a vessel of water, fruit, or butter, the sick person will die. On the other hand, it is esteemed an auspicious sign when the physician "comes in with the milk," i. e., arrives along with the milk-carrier. Much attention is also paid to dreams, as well those of the physician as those of the patient-in the latter case not without propriety. Favorable and unfavorable indications are also drawn from incidents relating to the messenger sent for the physician, his character, acts, appearance, dress, the hour at which he arrives, &c. Certain days are esteemed lucky and others unlucky for administering, preparing, and collecting drugs, commencing medical studies, &c.* Distinct traces of this last superstition may be found in some of the doctrines of Hippocrates-however free he may in general have been from similar weaknesses-as, for example, in the lengths he went in the enumeration of critical days (of which he reckons no less than eleven), months, and

* The extent to which the belief in lucky and unlucky days was carried among the earlier Greeks is well shown in the concluding portion of Hesiod's Works and Days,

years; his teaching (Aph., Ixi, § 4) that a fever which departs on an even day will probably return, and (Epidemics) that deaths from disease necessarily occur on an uneven day, month, or year. It is well known that Pythagoras pushed such considerations even farther.

The physician is carefully to observe the person of his patient, in order to discover whether he has the signs of longevity, which are supposed to consist mainly in the existence of a certain proportion between the limbs, chest, neck, &c., but other indications are not overlooked. The most favorable signs are long arms and fingers, long ears, large eyes, forehead, teeth, mouth, trunk, hands, feet, and shoulders, short and fleshy legs, short neck, a large space between the mammillæ, deep navel, well-formed joints, good voice, long respirations, and vigorous intelligence.

The directions given to the physician regarding the examination of his patient are such as would not discredit a treatise on diagnosis at the present day, and seem to have suggested the minute scrutiny practised by Hippocrates. The physician is carefully to note the general appearance of the patient, his or her age, sex, temperament, mental state, habits as to food, &c., occupation, tongue, fæces, urine, general sensations, appetite, breathing, sleep, and, in the case of women, the state of the menses, &c.a comprehensive though heterogeneous list of indications. Particular attention is to be paid to existing mental conditions, as fear, depression, &c., as well as to the habitual disposition and temper. Next, by the touch the physician is to discern the feverish heat or coldness, dryness or moisture, softness or hardness of the surface, as also the nature of the pulse, whence may be inferred the condition

*

* In Charaka and Susruta the pulse is but briefly considered in connection with different diseases; but in the works of more recent writers very special attention is paid to the pulse, as regards its volume, force, frequency, &c. It is said to be slow in the morning and at night, and rapid during the middle of the day and evening a statement which is, perhaps, pretty near the truth, for although writers of the present day have sometimes overlooked the morning retardation (and this may not be so great as that which occurs towards midnight), it seems to be indisputable that the pulse reaches its maximum about noon, and very slowly declines during the afternoon and

of the vessels as to tension, relaxation, &c.

Auscultation is next to be practised; the natural evacuations and any morbid purulent or other discharges are to be examined as to amount, colour, smell, and various other properties. After these preliminaries have been duly considered the physician is to prescribe the drugs and regimen which he deems most suitable.

The rewards to which the physician is entitled are said to be "money in the case of the rich; friendship, reputation, increase of virtue, prayers and gratitude, in that of the poor" (Wise, Hindu System of Medicine, p. 29). He is to accept no fee from a Brahman, a relative, or one who has no relations, and he is not to administer any remedies whatever to hunters and great sinners. The generosity apparent in these injunctions descended in ample measure to the earlier Greek physicians, however lamentably it may have declined among their unworthy successors, but the implied condemnation of the chase could hardly be expected to find any response from a nation which venerated Diana as a goddess and Meleager as a hero.

Having thus seen what were the notions of the Hindoos as to the origin and early history of medicine, and the nature of the studies, requirements, duties, social status, and remuneration of their physicians, it is now time to investigate their system of medicine itself, together with the state of their knowledge on cognate subjects, in all which, amidst much difference on points of detail, we shall discover a sufficiently striking general resemblance to

evening; so that, compared with the midday acceleration, the morning pulse may fairly be described as slow. The importance attached by the Hindoos to attending carefully to the circumstances under which the pulse is examined may be seen from the following extract from one of their sacred writings :"When it is to be consulted the patient ought to abstain from food, from occupation, from the bath and the use of oil, to avoid cold and heat, and to remain at ease and awake for some time before the physician arrives." Eight pulses are spoken of; the two radials at the wrist, the posterior tibials at the ankles, the branches distributed to the alæ nasi, the subclavians above the clavicle, and the carotids in the neck. The pulses of a woman are to be felt on the left side, and those of a man on the right.-Wise's Hindu Medicine, p. 203.

warrant us in asserting its ancestral claims in reference to Greek medicine, and, by consequence, to the medical science of the present day. Following the method of Dr. Wise, to whose admirable work on the Hindu System of Medicine I am so largely indebted, I shall consider this under four heads :—(1) anatomy and physiology, (2) therapeutics, (3) practice of medicine, and (4) midwifery and diseases of women and children.

(1.) Anatomy and physiology.-We have seen that the Hindoos acknowledged five elementary principles; to each one of these they attributed a particular primary quality : to earth, smell; to water, taste; to air, touch; to fire, colour; and to ether, sound. But while such were the attributes they deemed specially appropriate to each element, they held that sound and touch were common to the first four; visibility and taste, common to earth, fire, and water; and, furthermore, asserted that each element contributes its peculiar share to the physiological and mental, no less than the anatomical, structure of man. Thus, fire was supposed to furnish the sense of taste, and to be the active principle in the process of digestion (whence the "coction" of Aristotle and some other Greek writers); ether they acknowledge to be a spiritual element unrecognisable by our senses, and to it they ascribed the faculty of hearing. Certain moral and intellectual qualities, as revenge, stupidity, valour, shame, &c., were supposed to be imparted by the different elements, especially by ether and fire; while the Hindoos seem to have regarded air as the spring of all movement. During life they believed the human body to be animated by a soul, held by them to be an emanation from the Deity, which ultimately returns to its Source. Regarding man as the highest earthly creature, they supposed that every part and every function of his small microcosm had its analogue in the structure and processes of the vast macrocosm of the world—an idea which, I think, springs naturally enough from a Pantheistic theology such as theirs. Something analogous to it may be traced in the parallel drawn by Hippocrates between the four humours, the four seasons, the four ages of man,

and the four climates; while more than 2000 years later we find Paracelsus describing the brain as the microcosmic moon, epilepsy as the microcosmic earthquake, and apoplexy as the microcosmic thunderbolt-in fact, pushing such analogies quite as far as the Hindoos did, if not even farther. To the soul the Hindoos ascribed the faculty of dreaming, and, probably, also that of thought; but it is almost impossible to discriminate between the mental and spiritual endowments attributed to air, ether, and the soul. It is especially difficult to distinguish between ether and the soul, and traces of this ambiguity may, perhaps, be found in the strange theory of Erasistratus, that the soul is double (πνευμαζώτικον and πνευμαψύχικον).* Like the Hindoo "soul" the Greek TVεvua was supposed to be in some way essential to life; and in the writings of the earlier Greek philosophers there is a difficulty in discriminating between νɛμɑ and чuyn very much like that which we encounter when we endeavour to discriminate between the functions of the "soul" and those of "ether."

The body was held to consist of humours (dossoh) and essential parts (dhatu). Among the former were reckoned air, bile, and phlegm or pituita, blood being relegated to the class of dhatu. We are at once reminded of the four humours of Hippocrates, and struck with the discrepancy both in nature and number-air being excluded and blood admitted in the Hippocratic classification, while bile was subdivided into yellow and black. But, so far as regards subdivision, this process was really carried very much. farther by the Hindoos than by Hippocrates, for the former spoke of no fewer than five kinds of bile, and the same number of varieties of air and phlegm. And we must remember that the classification of Hippocrates was, to a great extent, influenced by his humoral pathology, being constructed, in fact, on pathological or nosological principles; while, notwithstanding the humoral pathology of the Hindoos, their classification of the humours is constructed strictly on physiological principles, true or false. This being the case, it would have been absurd in the

* Dr. J. R. Russell: History and Heroes of the Art of Medicine, p. 34.