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Page:A History of Hindu Chemistry Vol 1.djvu/52

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xxxiv

and the origin of Indian medicine.Haas is anxious to prove that the Hindus borrowed their notions of humoral pathology from the Greeks, and that the origines of Indian Medicine are to be looked for in the writings of Galen and Hippocrates; indeed he goes so far as to suggest that the very name of Susruta is derived from the Arabic word Sukrat (=Sokrates), which is often confounded with Bukrat, the Arabic corruption of the Greek Hippocrates.[1] There is certainly a strange similarity between the chapter on "Initiation" in the Charaka and the

"Eides" of Æsculapius as pointed out by Roth,[2] and there is also much in common between the doctrine of humoral pathology of
  1. No less preposterous is the etymology of Kásí (Benares), which Haas derives from Kos, the native place of Hippocrates.
  2. "Indische Medicin: Charaka," Z., D. M. G., Vol. 26. p. 441. Roth, whose knowledge of the Vedic and, to a certain extent, of the Ayurvedic, literature was encyclopedic, simply points out the analogy and stops short there. M. Liétard, who evidently borrows his information from Roth's article, jumps at once to the conclusion that the Hindus owe their inspiration to the Greeks!—Bull. de l’Acâd. de Méd. Paris, May 5, 1896 and May 11, 1897.