

companion volume. Its author deals chiefly with vegetable drugs. 

 He gives a few prescriptions containing mercury, in which this 

 metal is mixed with sulphur and vegetable substances, but the 

 preparations of mercury produced by sublimation and chemical 



■ 



combination with ealts, etc., were unknown to him. It would 

 appear, therefore, that mercury was just coming into use in his 

 time. He does not mention opium, so that his work, and 

 consequently the Kidana, must have been composed before the 

 intracluction of this drug into India by the Mussulmans 



The last great work on Hindu Medicine is that called the 

 Bhavaprakasa, compiled by Bhava Misra. It is a comprehensive 

 treatise, compiled from the works of preceding authors, with 

 much additional information on the properties of drugs, accounts 

 of new drugs, and of some new diseases, as for example, the 

 syphilis introduced into India by the Portuguese and described 

 in this work under the name of Phiringi roga. By the time this 

 work was composed, opium had been largely employed in practice, 

 the use of mercury had extended to almost all diseases, various 

 preparations of gold, silver, tin, copper, orpiment, arsenic, etc. f 

 had come into fashion, superseding to a considerable extent the 

 vegetable drugs of the older writer ; in short, Hindu patholozy 

 and therapeutics had reached their acme. Dr. Wise sajs that 

 Bhavaprakasa was composed about three hundred years ago. It 

 cannot, at any rate, be a much older work. China root, called 

 Chobohini in the vernacular, is described in it. According to 

 Fluckiger and Handbury the use of this drug as a remedy for 

 syphilis was made known to the Portugueese at Goa by Chinese 

 traders, about ( A. D. 1533 ). Hence the Bhavaprakasa must 

 have been compiled after this period. 



Besides the systematic treatises on the description and treat- 

 ment of dieases above noticed, there are several works in Sanskrit 

 devoted especially to the description of the synonyms and proper- 

 ties of individual medicines and articles of diet. The oldest 

 treatise on this subject is the one called Rajanirghantu. It is 

 generally ascribed to Dhanvantari, but Pundit Madhusudan Gupta 

 estimated the age of this work at 600 years. As both mercury 

 and opium are mentioned in this treatise, it cannot be older. 



Some later compilations on this subject are in general use at the 



