Medical e-texts available from the National Institute for Indian Medical Heritage, Hyderabad

It is not easy to find these books at the NIIMH website, so here are the links:

• Carakasaṃhitā
• Suśrutasaṃhitā
• Mādhavanidānam
• Nighaṇṭavaḥ (including   
• abhidhānamañjarī 
• abhidhānaratnamālā 
• amarakōśa 
• aṣṭāṅganighaṇṭu 
• kaiyadēvanighaṇṭu 
• camatkāranighaṇṭu 
• dravyaguṇasaṅgraha    
• dhanvantarinighaṇṭu 
• nighaṇṭuśēṣa 
• paryāyaratnamālā 
• bhāvaprakāśanighaṇṭu 
• madanapālanighaṇṭu 
• madanādinighaṇṭu 
• mādhavadravyaguṇa 
• rājanighaṇṭu 
• rājavallabhanighaṇṭu 
• laghunighaṇṭu 
• śabdacandrikā 
• śivakōṣa 
• sarasvatīnighaṇṭu 
• siddhamantra 
• siddhasāranighaṇṭu 
• sōḍhalanighaṇṭu 
• sauśrutanighaṇṭu and 
• hr̥dayadīpakanighaṇṭu)

A melancholy reflection from the online documentation:

...  किन्तु वर्तमान वैज्ञानिक युग में संस्कृत भाषा के प्रति पाठकों की अत्यल्प रुचि के कारण ...
"But in this scientific age there is little inclination towards reading in the Sanskrit language, and therefore ..."

Cranial surgery on Bhoja

Bhojadeva Bhiṣajām


The king cleansed his head at a tank, but a baby goldfish (śaphara-śāvaḥ) got into his skull.  Physicans couldn't cure the pain, so the king prepared to die, and banished all the physicians from the kingdom, throwing their medicines into the river.
Indra told the Aśvins about this, and they went to the king's court, disguised as brahmans.  They make the king unconscious with moha-cūrṇa and took his skull out and put it in a skull-shaped basin.  They removed the fish and threw them into a dish.  They reassembled his skull with glue, and woke him up with a reviving medicine (sañjīvanī) and showed him the fish.

Saradaprosad Vidyabhusan (ed.) भोज-प्रबन्धः श्रीबल्लाल विरचितः The Bhoj-Prabandha of Sree Ballal (With English Translation) (Calcutta: Auddy & Co., 1926), pp. 222-228. 
See also the tr. by Louis Gray in the AOS series, New Haven, 1950.

The Bhojaprabandha Ballāladeva of Benares, apparently 16th century (so not to be confused with Ballālasena the father of Lakṣmaṇasena, ruler of Bengal). 

Well-mannered Medicine published

I'm ever so proud about the publication this month of Dagmar's new book, Well-Mannered Medicine: Medical Ethics and Etiquette in Classical Ayurveda.

Please note that there are now two different "D. Wujastyk"s publishing on the history of science and medicine in South Asia. :-)

Here's the blurb:

Well-Mannered Medicine explores the moral discourses on the practice of medicine in the foundational texts of Ayurveda.

The classical ayurvedic treatises were composed in Sanskrit between the first and the seventh centuries CE, and later works, dating into the sixteenth century CE, are still considered strongly authoritative.  As Wujastyk shows, these works testify to an elaborate system of medical ethics and etiquette. Physicians looked to the ayurvedic treatises for a guide to professional conduct. Ayurvedic discourses on good medical practice depict the physician as highly-educated, skilled, moral, and well-mannered. The rules of conduct positioned physicians within mainstream society and characterized medical practice as a trustworthy and socially acceptable profession. At the same time, professional success was largely based on a particular physician's ability to cure his patients. This resulted in tension, as some treatments and medications were considered socially or religiously unacceptable. Doctors needed to treat their patients successfully while ostensibly following the rules of acceptable behavior.
Wujastyk offers insight into the many unorthodox methods of avoiding conflict while ensuring patient compliance shown in the ayurvedic treatises, giving a disarmingly candid perspective on the realities of medical practice and its crucial role in a profoundly well-mannered society.

---

Editorial Reviews

"Dagmar Wujastyk's thorough study of medical ethics in classical Ayurvedic texts adds substantially to our knowledge of Ayurveda as a medical system. Ethics here includes the moral attributes required of a physician, personal presentation, medical education, the doctor-patient relationship, medical deception, and much more. In this first rate study, Wujastyk avoids the danger of evaluating Ayurveda from the standpoint of Western medicine. This is required reading for everyone with an interest in Indian medicine or cross-cultural medical history."--Frederick M. Smith, Professor of Sanskrit and Classical Indian Religions, University of Iowa

About the Author

Dagmar Wujastyk is a postdoctoral research fellow at Zurich University in Switzerland and co-editor of Modern and Global Ayurveda - Pluralism and Paradigms. She has taught Sanskrit at the University of Bonn and Cambridge University.