Medicine is a science. Its practice is an art however deep is a physician’s knowledge. Every clinical state is rather unique and demands an empathic skill by him. It demands constant and actual experience as well as devoted attention to the individual human being. It has overtones, in fact, to the very attitude a person has towards life and his own. Here are the relevant social order and the resolution of its disruptive effects on the individual man. The sweep of modern medicine is thus almost all embracing.
The book, executed as a project of the University Grants Commission, examines this possibility anthologically. It does so from as wide a range of Sanskrit sources as felt necessary. This includes the Vedas, the Edicts, the Upanishads, the Dharmashastras and the Darshanas besides many classical texts on ayurveda and their commen-taries and so on. The highly rationalistic modern mind would be more impressed if it is made to acquaint itself as directly as possible with the original statements of the Sanskrit authors. This is why the anthological method is choosen towards this objective. This involves effective selec-tion of the sources and quotations in Sanskrit, arranging them in an order best condusive to their appreciation by students of modern medicine.
Experiment is a purposeful manipulation o f the circumstances to check the veracity of our hypotheses. In this sense, science is probably new to ancient Indian ethos or rather to human civilisation itself. The book is an attempt to demonstrate this thesis. |
