There are four different systems of medicine : Allopathy, Homeopathy, Unani and Ayurved. Ayurved is the oldest and probably the mother of the others. Hippocrates was the father of allopathic medicine, but Hippocrates, and after him, Aristotle and Pythagoras, were indebted to Egypt for some of there medical knowledge, and the Egyptian in turn acknowledged their indebtedness to “a wonderful race” from the East. Dr. Weise has said that this wonderful race probably the people of India. Ancient Indians engaged in the trade with Egypt and other lands and took with them many elements of their culture, among which was undoubtedly Ayurved, Their own indigenous system of medicine.

Up to the fifteenth century western countries used Ayurved, but the did not understand the inner significance of it, and when their own art, science, exploration, thought, etc. began to develop, they built a medical science of their own too, abandoning Ayurved. Still they retained some things, and through Hippocrates and the Greeks they were any how linked to it.

Ayurved says that due to the combination of body, mind and soul we get our conscious and active life. Many modern scientists claim that there is a spiritual world behind the material one is responsible for the formation of body, senses and multiform cell division. It further says that disease comes when there is bacterial attack from the outside at a time when the body has lost its vital force and balance. At the same time it holds that the spiritual energy of the Self is the seat and root of everything. Hahnemann has this as the basis of his homeopathy; he calls it the vital force.

We grow out of our past, and so we usually have respect for it. Someday the present will be past and also venerable. When a thing is both ancient and superior, respect amounts almost to worship. Such is the case with Ayurved.

According to Charak’s delightful story, the ancient wise men of India one day assembled at the foot of the Himalayas with the purpose of ridding men of disease. They decided to send one Bharadwaj to heaven to learn medicine from the god Indra. According to another account by Susruta, one Dhanwantari, the house physician in heaven, learned the science from Indra and took birth in this world with the sole object of imparting his knowledge to eight chosen men of good will. According to other scriptures, when Narayan came to Earth as Visnu Incarnate, He taught knowledge of Ayurved to one Anantadeb. In the Purans we get the Dhanwantari story in a slightly different form. Here angels and demons combinedly churned the seas to get the ambrosia of immortality. Then Dhanwantari came out of the sea and taught Ayurved to men of the Earth. From these accounts we can understand that Ayurved even in olden times was regarded as ancient and superior. Men have a natural tendency to believe in the divine origin of what is old and good. The Greeks thought their medicine came from Apollo; the Egyptians, theirs from Thyoth; the Hindus, Ayurved from Indra and Narayan.

Whatever the origin of Ayurved, human or divine, what we see is that it has come down to us through seers. Lord Buddha, under whose influence King which Asoke accomplished so many marvels-among which was certainly the preservation of Ayurved-was born in 567 B. C. Long before the time of Buddha however, Ayurved experiments had gone on under various seers in India. The science was further developed in different ages by Drirabal, Nagarjun, Bagvat, Madabkor, Chakrapani, etc. After Buddha and Asoke there was considerable growth. Charak and Susruta had hardly ever used minerals as medicines, but in the Tantric Age mercury and other minerals were used plentifully by Somdeb, Gobinda, Nagarjun, etc. Nagarjun is sometimes called the Lavoisier of Tantric Times. Bhab Misra in the sixteenth century wrote about syphilis, a new foreign importation. After the sixteenth century Ayurved continued, but in 1835 a college of Allopathy was started in Calcutta. Up to that time Allopathy had not made such great progress in this country. We did not, and sometimes we do not even now, like to give a glance in the direction of Allopathy, but it is doubtful if

Ayurved could have gone ahead as it has, without the help of allopathic chemistry.

Ayurvedists regard the five elements: ether, air, water, fire and earth as the basic forms of all matter. Aristotle in Ancient Greece spoke of air, water, fire and earth only. Sometime after him sulphur, mercury and salt were regarded as the primary elements. Robert Boyle later still spoke of an imaginary phlogiston, and John Dalton carried the investigation forward with his theory of the Atom. Since Dalton’s day scientists have broken the atom into a number of still smaller units, and we can only gaze with wonder at the perseverance and progress of western researchers.

That the Ayurvedists reduced all matter to five primary forms is also a wonderful thing. In breaking the atom, western scientists have pushed their conceptions to some irreducible energy, but what lies behind this energy they are not able to say. They will need still more sensitive instruments or perceptions to clarify their ideas. But the Ayurvedists of old knew what lay behind energy. They had sensitized their bodies to that extent.

Chemistry is the life-blood of medicine. Did the Ayurvedists of old know any chemistry? While speaking of self-analysis, Charak also mentioned chemical analysis. In Atharvaveda we find some chemical matter. In a chapter there, on ingredients and longevity, we find discussion of the application of such materials as peepul tree, catechu, saffron, apamarga, munja, acacia, etc. in various combinations with gold and silver. Since then new applications have been made. In Europe before Lavoisier, Paracelsus was the most renowned chemist. He became famous for his discovery of mercury. But centuries before him black sulphide of mercury had been discovered in India. There were many other discoveries as well: mercuric chloride, powdered gold, mercuric sulphide, resublimated mercuric sulphide, etc. These were all discovered before Buddha and further developed in his time. In the second, century a king of chemistry appeared in Nagarjun. He was both a spiritualist and a scientist.

From the day of Dalton’s atom western science has stunned the world with discoveries and inventions. From a broken radium atom we can now get enough energy to propel a train. It is a modern miracle. It is also be- yond our imagination that Jagadish Chandra Bose has recorded vibrations of the ether on his galvanometer. On the subject of matter and energy this great scientist has said, “There is no separate energy in matter. All energy comes from God in the form of vibrations. These vibrations give life or energy.” In this he is at one with Ayurved.

But to realize the five primary material forms or elements of Ayurved we may need even more sensitive instruments than the galvanometer of Mr. Bose. Out of their concentrations the ancient seers gathered the conclusion that there were five primary elements. We ought not reject this conclusion off-hand as vague or unworthy. It probably contains a truth and only awaits a more sensitized human sensorium to be understood.