837 



SUSRUTA. 



SUTZOS, ALEXANDROS. 



838 



affections of the eye, ear, &c. In all these divisions however surgery, 

 and not general medicine, is the object of the book of Susruta ; 

 though, by an arrangement not uncommon with our own writers, be 

 introduces occasionally the treatment of general diseases, and the 

 management of women and children, when discussing those topics to 

 which they bear relation. As this is the only Sam-crit medical work 

 which (as far as the writer is aware) has been published, it will not be 

 out of place here to give some account of the state of medicine among 

 the Hindoos, extracted from two notices by Professor Wilson, pub- 

 lished originally in the 'Oriental Magazine* (Calcutta, February and 

 March, 1823), from which several passages are inserted by Professor 

 Rojle in his 'Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine,' 8vo, 

 London, 1837. The instrumental part of medical treatment was, 

 according to the best authorities, of eight kinds ' Chhedana,' cutting 

 or scission ; ' Bhedana/ division or excision ; ' Lek'hana,' which means 

 ' drawing lines,' appears to be applied to scarification and inoculation ; 

 'Vyadhana,' puncturing; 'Eshyam,' probing or sounding; 'Aharya,' 

 extraction of solid bodies ; ' Visravana,' extraction of fluids, including 

 venesection ; and ' Sevana,' or sewing. The mechanical means by 

 which these operations were performed seem to have been sufficiently 

 numerous : of these, the principal are the following : '* ' Yantras," 

 properly ' machines,' in the present case ' instruments ; ' but to distin- 

 guish them from the next class, to which that title more particularly 

 applies, we may call them 'implements;' 'Sastras,' weapons or instru- 

 ments; 'Kshara,' alkaline solutions or caustics; 'Agni,' fire, the actual 

 cautery ; ' Salaka,' pins or tents ; ' Sringa', horns, the horns of animals 

 open at the extremities, and, as well as ' alabu,' or gourds, used as our 

 cupping-glasses ; the removal of the atmospheric pressure through the 

 first being effected by suction, and in the second by rarifying the air 

 by the application of a lamp. The next subsidiary means are 

 ' Jalauka,' or leeches. 



" Besides these, we have thread, leaves, bandages, pledgets, heated 

 metallic plates for erubescents, and a variety of astringent or emollient 

 applications." 



The descriptions of the very numerous Hindoo instruments not being 

 very minute or precise, Professor Wilson says we can only conjecture 

 what they may have been from a consideration of the purport of their 

 names, and the objects to which they were applied, in conjunction 

 with the imperfect description given. 



" The 'sastras,' or cutting instruments, were of metal, and should be 

 always bright, handsome, polished, and sharp, sufficiently so indeed 

 to divide a hair longitudinally. 



" The means by which the young practitioner is to obtain dexterity 

 in the use of his instruments are of a mixed character ; and whilst 

 some are striking specimens of the lame contrivances to which the 

 want of the only effective vehicle of instruction, human dissection, 

 compelled the Hindoos to have recourse, others surprise us by their 

 supposed incompatibility with what we have been hitherto disposed 

 to consider as insurmountable prejudices. Thus the different kinds 

 of scission, longitudinal, transverse, inverted, and circular, are directed 

 to be practised on flowers, bulbs, and gourds. Incision, on skins or 

 bladders filled with paste and mire ; scarification, on the fresh hides of 

 animals from which the hair has not been removed ; puncturing or 

 lancing, on the hollow stalks of plants, or the vessels of dead animals ; 

 extraction, on the cavities of the same, or fruits with many large 

 seeds, as the Jack and Bel ; sutures, on skin and leather ; and ligatures 

 and bandages, on well-made models of the human limbs. The employ- 

 ment of leather, skin, and even of dead carcasses, thus enjoined, 

 proves an exemption from notions of impurity we were little to expect, 

 when adverting to their actual prevalence. Of course their use 

 implies the absence of any objections to the similar employment of 

 human subjects ; and although they are not specified, they may pos- 

 sibly be implicated in the general direction which the author of the 

 ' Susruta ' gives, that the teacher shall seek to perfect his pupil by the 

 application of all expedients which he may think calculated to effect 

 his proficiency. 



" Of the supplementary articles of Hindoo surgery, the first is 

 ' Kshara,' alkaline or alkalescent salts. This is obtained by burning 

 different vegetable substances, and boiling the ashes with five or six 

 times their measure of water. In some cases the concentrated solu- 

 tion is used after straining, and is administered internally, as well as 

 applied externally. 



" Care is enjoined in their use, and emollient applications are to he 

 applied, if the caustic occasions very great pain. At the same time 

 thesu and the other substitutes for instrumental agents are only to be 

 had recourse to where it is necessary to humour the weakness of the 

 patient. They are especially found serviceable where the surgeon has 

 to deal with princes and persons of rank, old men, women and 

 children, and individuals of a timid and effeminate character. 



" The cautery is applied by hot seeds, combustible substances 

 inflamed, boiling fluids of a gelatinous or mucous consistence, and 

 heated metallic bars, plates, and probes. The application is useful in 

 many cases, as to the temples and forehead, for headaches; to the eye- 

 lids, for diseases of the eyes ; to the part affected, for indurations in 

 the skin; to the sides, for spleen and liver ; and to the abdomen, for 

 mesenteric enlargements. As amongst the Greeks, however, the chief 

 use of the cautery was in the case of hemorrkages, bleeding being 

 stopped by searing the wounded vessels. 



" If leeches, when applied, are slow and sluggish, a little blood may 

 be drawn from the part by a lancet, to excite their vivacity ; when 

 they fall off the bleeding may be maintained by the use of the horna 

 and gourds, or the substitutes already mentioned for the cupping- 

 glasses of our own practice." 



The operations are rude, and very imperfectly described. They 

 were evidently bold, and must have been hazardous : their being 

 attempted at all is however very extraordinary, unless their oblitera- 

 tion from the knowledge, not to say the practice, of later times be 

 considered as a still more remarkable circumstance. It would be an 

 inquiry of some interest, to trace the period and causes of the dis- 

 appearance of surgery from amongst the Hindoos ; it is evidently of 

 comparatively modern occurrence, as operative and instrumental 

 practice forms so principal a part of those writings which are unde- 

 niably most ancient, and which, being regarded as the composition of 

 inspired writers, ard held of the highest authority. 



Besides these sacred writings, there are many valuable professional 

 tracts which correspond with, and are in fact commentaries on them. 

 These are said to have been composed by prophets and holy men 

 (Maha Rishib), to whom is generally given a divine origin. 



The different nations of India have their respective medical authors, 

 in the peninsula and the south of India, in Tamul; those of the Telin- 

 gas, in Teloogoo ; in Bengal and the northern provinces the works in 

 use among the Hindoos are in Sanscrit; while among the Mohammedan 

 population Persian works and translations from the Arabic are chiefly 

 in use. 



The ^ork of Susruta was one of those ordered to be printed by the 

 Indian government for the use of its native subjects ; but the printing 

 of this, as well at- of many others, was stopped, when most of them 

 were nearly completed the first volume and three-fourths of the 

 second of the Susruta having been printed. Fortunately, the Asiatic 

 Society of Calcutta, with the spirit and zeal which has ever distin- 

 guished it, undertook at their own risk to complete the works. The 

 treatise of Susruta was published by the society in 1836, in 2 vols. 4to. 

 It has been translated into Lathi by F. Hessler, 3 vols. 4to, Erl., 

 1846-50. 



SUSSEX, DUKE OF. [AUGUSTUS FREDERICK.] 



SUSTERMANS, JUSTUS, a distinguished Flemish painter, was 

 born at Antwerp in 1597. He was the pupil of William de Vos. He 

 is little known in Flanders; he lived chiefly in Florence, where he 

 was appointed hiB court painter by the Grand-Duke Cosmo II. He 

 was favoured also by Ferdinand II., whose portrait he painted, and 

 who ennobled him. His master-piece is a large picture of the Floren- 

 tine nobility swearing allegiance to Ferdinand upon his succession. He 

 died at Florence in 1681. There are several portraits by him in the 

 Pitti Palace at Florence. Rubens is said to have pronounced Suster- 

 rnans an honour to his country. (Descamps, La> Vie de Peintres 

 Flamands, &c.; Lanzi, Storia Pittorica, <Ssc.) 



* SUTZOS, ALEXANDROS, one of two brothers who have taken a 

 conspicuous share in the politics of Greece, and who are at the same 

 time the Castor and Pollux of its modern poetical literature. Alex- 

 andros was born at Constantinople, in 1802 : his mother, the sister of 

 the Greek poet, Rizo Nerulos, was the wife of Constantine Sutzos, or 

 Soutzo, of a Fanariote family, which has given many Hospodars to 

 Wallachia and Moldavia. On the death of their father the children 

 were adopted by their uncle, Alexandros, hospodar of Wallachia, who, 

 in 1820, sent Alexandros and Panagiotes to Paris to be educated. 

 Their elder brother, Demetrius, who remained at home, took part in 

 the unsuccessful outbreak of Ypsilanti, encouraged by Michael Sutzos, 

 hospodar of Moldavia, which commenced the Greek insurrection, 

 became one of the chiefs of the ' Sacred Battalion,' and fell at Dragatsan, 

 in 1821, fighting with the Turks. Alexandros returned to Greece to 

 take part in the war, and in 1826 made his first appearance as a poet 

 by the publication of five satires against the government, which at 

 once established his reputation as the moat conspicuous rising poet of 

 Greece. At the close of the war "he again visited Paris, and published 

 in French an ' Histoire de la Revolution Grecque' (Paris, 1829), or 

 ' History of the Greek Revolution, by an eye-witness of a great part of 

 the events described.' The history is dedicated ' to the manes " of 

 his brother Demetrius; the style is animated, but more poetical than 

 historical ; and the French is so classical that it received the praise of 

 Chateaubriand. The volume concludes with an anticipation of benefit 

 to Greece from the government of Capodistria, which the writer soon 

 thought he saw cause to abandon. One of his first productions, on his 

 return to Greece in 1830, was a collection of satirical poems on Capo- 

 distria and his party entitled 'The Panorama;' and after the assassina- 

 tion of Capodistria, Sutzos was still more vehement against him in his 

 ' 'E^piffros rov 1831,' or 'Exile of 1831,' a political novel published at 

 Athens in 1838. He greeted with a poetical epistle the arrival of King 

 Otho in Greece, in 1833, and satirised those who deprecated the govern- 

 ment of the Bavarians ; but here again he saw reason to change his 

 opinions, and was a few years after one of the most energetic oppo- 

 nents of the Bavarian ministry. The interference of foreigners in gene- 

 ral with the affairs of Greece became the object of his denunciations, 

 and " the wild English," and " the tame Russians" were stigmatised as 

 equal enemies of Greek independence. His poem 'O Tlfpiirtovdpfvos, 

 ' The Wanderer ' (1839), perhaps his finest work, is a mixture of a 

 love-story, descriptive of the character of nations and countries in the 



