Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/57

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India, whose attention was directed to the disorder by observing that flies and other insects were attracted to the urine of these patients by reason of its sweetness. It is also an interesting fact that occasionally these physicians, who, beyond a doubt, were keen observers of symptoms, paid some attention to the anatomical features of the individual cases. Thus, it is stated that the particular form of swelling of the lower abdomen, to which they applied the name "splenic belly," is dependent upon "an enlarged spleen which distends the left side, is as hard as a stone, and is arched like the back of a turtle"; whereas they spoke of "an enlargement of the liver" when very much the same conditions were observed on the right side of the abdomen. The accuracy of their clinical observations is particularly noticeable in their accounts of cases of consumption, apoplexy, epilepsy, hemicrania, tetanus, rheumatism, venereal diseases, some affections of the skin, and insanity. It was in their surgical technique, however, that the physicians of ancient India were distinguished above all their brethren of the neighboring oriental countries, and this superiority they maintained for a very long time. Among the operations which they performed the following may be mentioned: they removed tumors by excising them, they opened abscesses by the use of the knife, they employed scarifications (in inflammations of the throat) and made punctures (in hydrocele and ascites), they passed probes into fistulae, they extracted foreign bodies, and they employed needles armed with hairs taken from the horsed tail or with thread composed of flax or hemp. According to Súsruta their stock of instruments was composed of 101 blunt and 20 cutting instruments. Among those which were blunt there were forceps of different sizes and forms, hooks, tubes, probes or sounds, catheters, bougies, etc. They made use of the magnet for drawing out foreign bodies of iron, and they applied cups for therapeutic purposes. Their cutting instruments consisted of knives, bistouris, lancets, scissors, trochars, needles, etc. Steel was the metal of which they were made; for the people of India learned at a very early period how