Page:A Short History of Aryan Medical Science.djvu/231

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Chap. XII.]
MEDICINE AND SURGERY.
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of excellence in Materia Medica, Therapeutics and Hygiene, while the Western science is far more accurate and far superior in Chemistry, Anatomy, Physiology, and Surgery. The Indian science may well be proud of its symptomatology, diagnosis, and prognosis ; and the Western science of its Pathology and ^Etiology. The popular be- lief is, that in acute diseases European medicines are more effective than the Indian ones, but that in chronic cases the latter are more fficacious. In Legal Medicine the process of detecting poison by chemical analysis, resorted to by European toxicologists with great accuracy, is unknown to the Indians. In the preparation and administration of mineral drugs, the Hindoos claim to have a long experience. There is a striking resemblance between the two systems as regards the treatment of several diseases, such as diarrhoea, piles, asthma, consumption, paralysis, etc. It is but a truism to say that in some respects the Indian mode of treating certain diseases, peculiar to tropical climates, is more suitable and rational than any other. A close study of the science will convince an impartial reader that it contains germs of some of the modern discoveries in the healing art. A few of them, such as circulation