ABSTRACT
The Ayurvedic system of medicine is now widely practiced in southern Asia, particularly in India, where it originated, and to varying degrees in Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. The long-established systems of traditional medicine have evolved by systematically recorded human experience over several millenia. Treatment consists in avoiding the factors that are responsible for the disease and by administration of medicine, diet, and activity regimens, restoring the balanced state of the body — a holistic rather than a symptomatic approach. Preparations based on traditional medicine should be simulated using modern methods of processing and subjected to clinical trials. The Manasika diseases cover in addition to those considered as mental diseases in modern medicine, such states of imbalance as caused by anger, pride, greed, hate, uncurbed desires, etc. The strategy is aimed at benefitting not only the developing countries, but those of the industrial world, particularly where adequate therapy for particular diseases is lacking.
