PREFACE.
It is with mingled feelings of pain and pleasure that we now place before the public the Second Volume of our English Translation of the Susruta Samhita. The arduous task of compiling a connected and succint history of any part whatever, of the ancient Hindu System of Medicine—requires greater leisure and more extensive reading than we can lay any pretension to. Years of patient study and constant discourse with our sainted preceptor the late lamented Mahamahopadhyaya Kaviraj Dwaraka Nath Sen, Kaviratna, that refulgent link of the golden chain of the Dhanvantaric succession, have enabled us, however, to grasp the leading facts, and during the last few years we have worked continuously, in moments snatched from the practice of an anxious profession that knows no respite, to arrange these facts in their present form. It breaks our heart to record the sad departure of our venerable Acharyya from this sublunary sphere to a land "from whose bourne no traveller e'er returns."
It is hardly necessary for us to reply to those critics who, through their ignorance of the original
