PREFACE.
No special apology is necessary for the publication of an English translation of the Sushruta Samhita. The vast medical literature of ancient India practically remains as yet unexplored, and any undertaking, which has the object of making that terra incognita, known to the scientific world, is bound to be welcomed by the public. Spasmodic attempts have been made by several scholars and erudite bodies to bring out an English translation of the Sushruta Samhita, as the most representative work of the Ayurveda, but we regret to say that such efforts have hitherto proved abortive. In spite of incomplete information on the subject many drugs of the Ayurvedic Materia Medica have been adopted by different foreign systems of medicine, and this has afforded us a fresh impetus to issue an English translation of the book, which not only deals with the essentials of Indian Therapeutics but embraces the whole range of the science of Ayurveda, as it was understood and practised by the Vedic sages.
We sincerely hope that the English rendering of Sushruta, which we have undertaken, will, when completed, supply a long-felt want and help to start a fuller inquiry into the properties of the indigenous drugs of India. Many institutions have been already started both in England and Germany with the sole object of studying the aetiology of tropical diseases, and of formulating an empirical system of their prevention and cure, and we, hope an English translation of the Sushruta Samhita, embracing as it
