62 
intimate knowledge of the contents of these Hindoo works 
would be highly interesting; and I hope that there is 
sufficient zeal in the profession here, as well as in India, 
to command the translation of at least the two oldest 
works, (those of Charak and Susruta,) as well as of one 
on each of the different departments, to give European 
readers a complete view of Hindoo Medicine, and enable 
us to weigh its claims to originality. 
Hindoo works on Medicine having been proved to have 
existed prior to the Arabs, little doubt can be entertained, 
I conceive, respecting their originality; as we know of no 
source from which they could have been borrowed, except 
from the Greeks; and there is little probability of the 
Hindoos having had access to any original or translated 
works at so early a period, as must have been the case 
from their containing no traces of the Galenical doctrines 
so conspicuous in the writings of the Arabs. Some coin- 
cidences would appear rather to be that of observers of 
the same facts, than of borrowers from the same books. 
The description of some diseases which seem to have been 
first known in India, as well as the internal administration 
of metals, they could not have borrowed from the Greeks. 
That there must have been independent observers in 
India, at a very early age of the world, we have proofs 
in the commerce of their manufactures and of their medi- 
cines. Many of the latter may be found described in the 
works of the Greeks, but we see no trace of European 
medicines in those of the Hindoos ; and though know- 
ledge may travel from north to south, tropical products 
can in our hemisphere only travel from south to north. 
Their employment, therefore, in the latter, proves their 
previous investigation by a people resident in the countries 
of their growth. On such grounds, therefore, I conceive, 
we may infer the antiquity of Hindoo medicine ; and while 
