ABSTRACT
THE Hindu medical science unfortunately received less attention from the earlier antiquarians that the other Indian sciences, and the facts collected even up to the present date are not nearly exhaustive. As early as 1823, Professor H. H. Wilson published in the Oriental Magazine a brief notice of Hindu medicines and medical works. The indefatigable traveller and devoted scholar Csoma de Koros gave a sketch of Hindu medical opinions as trans-. lated into the Thibetan language in the Journal of the Asiatic Society for January 1835. Heyne and Ainslie also collected much information on the subject of Hindu medicines. And in 1837, Dr. Royle, of the King’s College, London, combined all the information available from the above works, with many original researches of his own, in his celebrated essay on the antiquity of Hindu medicine. Our distinguished countryman, Madhusudan Gupta, who first broke through modern prejudices against dissection, and was Lecturer of Anatomy to the Mimical College of Calcutta, edited the ancient work on Hindu surgery known as Susruta, and proved that the ancients had no silly prejudices against the pursuit of science in a scientific way. Dr. Wise, late of the Bengal Medical Service, published in 1845 a commentary on the ancient Hindu system of medicine ; and later on he treated the subject ably and fully in his Review of the History of Medicine published in London in 1867. The subject has received more attention from our countrymen since this date, and the patriotic physician, Abinas Chandra Kaviratna, is now editing vahiable editions of Charaka and Susruta with commentaries.
