64 
succeeded respectively in the years 786 and 813 to the 
Caliphate, when it stretched to the Indus: the latter sur- 
vived only twenty years. Geber is supposed to have lived 
in the seventh or eighth century, and we have shewn the 
probability of his having had access to the chemical 
knowledge of the Hindoos. But for their merits to have 
been sufficiently established for their works to be translated 
at the same time with those of the principal Greek authors, 
these Hindoo physicians must certainly have lived and written 
long before ; to allow their fame to extend into foreign coun- 
tries, in an age when the communication of literature must 
have been at least as slow as it now is in the East.* 
• Having mentioned to Professor Wilson the discovery I had made, of 
the Arabs having been indebted to the Hindoos for some of the infor- 
mation for which they have hitherto received credit, he informed me that he 
had seen a notice in the Foreign Quarterly Review, of a German physician 
having made the same discovery. I looked through every number of that 
periodical, but was unable to find the notice alluded to- It is only since 
the foregoing part has been in type, that Professor Wilson has informed 
me, that the notice was contained in the Journal of Education. On applying 
to Messrs. Taylor and Walter, booksellers to University College, they 
were good enough to look out the passage for me, where may be seen, 
in volume viii. p. 176, that " Dietz, one of the medical professors at the 
University of Konigsberg, who has spent five years of his life in visiting the 
principal libraries of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, France, and 
England, in search of manuscripts of ancient Greek, Roman, and Oriental 
writers on Medicine, is now engaged in publishing his ' Analecta Medica.' 
The work contains several interesting papers on the subject of Physical 
Science among the Indians and Arabians, and communicates several intro- 
ductory notices and illustrations from native Eastern writers. Dietz proves 
that the late Greek physicians were acquainted with the medical works of 
the Hindus, and availed themselves of their medicaments ; but he more 
particularly shews, that the Arabians were familiar with them, and extolled 
the healing art, as practised by the Indians, quite as much as that in use 
among the Greeks. It appears from Ibn Osaibe's testimony (from whose 
biographical work Dietz has given a long abstract on the Lives of Indian 
Physicians), that a variety of treatises on Medical Science were translated 
from the Sanscrit into Persian and Arabic, particularly the more important 
compilations of Charaka and Susruta, which are still held in estimation in 
India; and that Manka and Saleh, the former of whom translated a special 
treatise on Poison into Persian, even held appointments as body-physicians 
at 
