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In the latter the humoral pathology is fully developed, the diagnosis and prognosis of diseases described at length, and an elaborate mode of classification adopted. We have seen above that the physicians were assigned rather an inferior status in society; the healing art was, in fact, never recognised as a division of the Vedas.[1] Still the claims of the indispensable science of medicine, which can be distinctly traced to the A. V., could not altogether be ignored, and ultimately a compromise was arrived at. In the Charaka itself the Science of Life
- ↑ The six limbs or divisions of the Vedas are sikshá (phonetics), kalpa (ceremonial), vyákarana (grammar), nirukta (etymology), chhandas (metre) and jyotisha (astronomy).
material ideas, and, from the votive tablets, traditions, and other sources, together with his own admirable observations, compiling a body of medicine. The necessary consequence of his great success was the separation of the pursuits of the physician from those of the priest. Not that so great a revolution, implying the diversion of profitable gains from the ancient channel, could have been accomplished without a struggle. We should reverence the memory of Hippocrates for the complete manner in which he effected that object."—Draper's "Hist. of the Intellect. Dev. in Europe," I. p. 393 (ed. 1896). The services rendered by Charaka, Susruta and their predecessors were equally valuable.
