MEDICINE 6000 B.C.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 6 September 1913, Page 12

MEDICINE 6000 B.C.

Speaking before the Royal Society of Medicine recently, Dr C. Muthu. of the Meridip Hills Sanatorium, Wells, 6aid that Hindu civilisation was the most ancient in the world. The astronomical allusions in the hymns of the Rig Veda (the oldest literature in the world) took one back to 6000 B.C. Their medicine was as old as their civilisatioi. They excelled in materia medica and chemistry; they were the first among the ancients to practice the dissection of the human body and to employ minerals and mercury internally. Many centuries ago they understood the ?&erm theory, circulation of the blood, and inoculation for smallpox. Their successful treatment of snake bites astonished Alexander the Great, and their surgery was bold and skilful, for not only did they set broken bones, but they trephined the skull, gave anaesthetics in serious operations, and amputated limbs. After the death of Buddha, when surgery began to decline and medicine.. flourished more, medical houses and hospitals were established in India, provided with medicines and instruments, and attended by physicians who relieved the sick and suffering, but long before Buddha there were medical schools and colleges. Arab medicine, which wa» founded on Hindu medicine, taught European physicians as late as the 17th century, and Western people owed a great debt to India in this direction.