AmMa°rch, i&rm" }     Ancient  and  Modern  Hindu  Medicine,  133 
is  known  as  the  Madras  Ayur  Vedic  College,  and  is  under  the  aus- 
pices of  the  Sri  Kanyaka  Paramesvari  Charities.  The  course  of 
study  extends  over  three  years.  The  works  of  Charaka,  Susruta, 
Bahata  and  other  Ayur  Vedic  writers  are  taught.  Anatomy,  physi- 
ology, materia  medica,  midwifery  and  hygiene  are  also  taught  by 
graduates  of  the  English  Medical  College  of  Madras.  The  students 
who  pass  the  required  examinations  receive  diplomas  stating  that 
they  are  qualified  physicians  of  the  Ayur  Vedic  system.  At  present 
they  have  only  a  dispensary  in  connection  with  this  school,  but  they 
hope  soon  to  have  a  hospital.  From  200  to  300  patients  are  treated 
daily  at  this  dispensary.  When  in  October,  1906,  I  visited  this  in- 
stitution, the  superintendent,  Pandit  D.  Gopala  Charlu,  was  most 
courteous  in  his  attention  and  showed  me  everything  of  interest. 
In  the  waiting-  and  treatment-rooms  there  was  nothing  to  distinguish 
them  from  the  ordinary  Government  dispensary.  The  prescriptions 
are  written  in  Sanscrit  and  compounded  in  the  drug-room  by  the 
students.  The  drugs  are  obtained  largely  from  Mysore  and  Mala- 
bar, but  a  few  herbs  are  cultivated  in  the  garden  adjoining  the 
building.  Pills,  powders,  tinctures,  honeys,  waters,  ointments  and1 
oils  are  upon  the  shelves  of  the  drug-room.  Arsenic,  strychnine,  nuxr 
vomica,  lead,  zinc,  mercury,  iron  and  gold  are  used  in  different 
forms.  The  superintendent  belongs  to  an  old  family  of  Hindu  phy- 
sicians and  is  on  very  friendly  terms  with  European  members  of  the 
medical  profession.  He  has  made  a  special  study  of  plague,  and 
has  a  special  remedy  for  it.  He  writes :  "  In  the  good  old  days,, 
more  than  a  thousand  years  ago,  when  several  of  the  nations  now 
held  up  as  models  of  civilization  were  naked  savages,  fighting  (at 
existence  with  many  of  their  more  formidable  enemies,  the  great 
medical  men  of  India  were  grappling  with  this  formidable  disease." 
It  is  the  ambition  of  the  Pandit  to  have  an  Ayur  Vedic  dispensary 
in  every  district  of  the  Madras  Presidency. 
In  conclusion,  we  may  ask  :  What  is  the  condition  of  medicine  in 
India  to-day  ? 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  condition  of  medicine  is  not  unlike  that 
of  religion.  There  is  the  quackery  that  has  arisen  because  of  the 
decline  of  ancient  Hindu  medicine  ;  a  system  based  on  hypocrisy 
and  deception,  succeeding  in  proportion  to  the  superstition  and 
ignorance  of  the  people,  having  its  counterpart  in  modern  Hinduism, 
with  its  temples  and  priests.    There  are  the  comparatively  few  hered- 
