Amongst the legends of Gotama Buddha is the history of Jíwaka, which is of great interest to the historians of medicine, as it illustrates the state of the science in India at that early age. The following account is abbreviated from Mr. Spence Hardy’s translation of Singhalese MSS.[264]
Jíwaka was a physician who administered medicine to Budha. He learned his profession in this way. When he was seven or eight years of age, he ran away from his parents, resolving that he would learn some science; so he considered the character of the eighteen sciences and the sixty-four arts, and determined that he would study the art of medicine, that he might be called doctor, and be respected, and attain to eminence. So he went to the collegiate city of Taksalá[265] and applied to a learned professor to take him into his school of medicine. The professor asked him what fees he had brought with him. Jíwaka said he had no money, but he was willing to work. The professor liked the manner of the lad, and agreed to teach him, though from other pupils he received a thousand masurans. At this moment the throne of Sekra trembled, as Jíwaka had been acquiring merit, and was soon to administer medicine to Gotama Budha. The déwa resolved that as he was to become the physician of Budha, he would himself be his teacher; and for this purpose he came to the earth, entered the mouth of the professor, and inspired him with the wisdom he needed to teach his pupil in the most excellent manner.
Jíwaka made rapid progress, and soon discovered that he could treat the patients more successfully than his master. He learned in seven years as much about diseases as any other teacher could have taught him in sixteen. Then Jíwaka asked his preceptor when his education would be finished; and the old man, wishing to test his knowledge, told him to take a basket and go outside the city for the space of sixteen miles, and collect all the roots, barks, leaves, and fruits which were useless in the art of medicine. Jíwaka did as he was instructed, and after four days he returned and informed the professor that he had met with no substance which in some way or other was not useful in medicine; there was no such thing on earth. Now when the teacher heard this reply, he said, there was no one who could teach the pupil any more, and Sekra departed from his mouth. He knew that his pupil had been taught by divine wisdom. Then Jíwaka journeyed to Sákétu, where he found a woman who had a violent pain in her head, which for seven years many learned physicians had vainly tried to cure. He offered to cure her, but she said, “If all the learned doctors had failed to relieve her, it was useless to seek the aid of a little child.” Jíwaka replied that “Science is neither old nor young. I will not go away till the headache is entirely cured.” Then the woman said, “My son, give me relief for a single day: it is seven years since I was able to sleep.” So Jíwaka poured a little medicine into her nose, which went into her brain, and behold, all her headache was gone; and the lady and her relations each gave the physician 4,000 níla-karshas, with chariots, and other, and other gifts in abundance. After this he cured the king of a fistula-in-ano, for which he received a royal reward. There was in Rajagaha a rich nobleman who had a pain in his head like the cutting of a knife. None of his physicians could cure him, so Jíwaka took the noble into a room, sat behind him, and taking a very sharp instrument, opened his skull; and setting aside the three sutures, he seized the two worms which were gnawing his brain with a forceps, and extracted them entire. He then closed up the wound in such a manner that not a single hair was displaced. There was a nobleman in Benares who had twisted one of his intestines into a knot, so that he was not able to pass any solid food. Crowds of physicians came to see him, but none of them dare undertake his case; but Jíwaka said at once he could cure him. He bound his patient to a pillar that he might not move, covered his face, and taking a sharp instrument, without the noble’s being aware of what was going on, ripped open the abdomen, took out his intestines, undid the knot, and replaced them in a proper manner. He then rubbed ointment on the place, put the patient to bed, fed him on rice-gruel, and in three days he was as well as ever. Of course he had an immense fee. After performing other wonderful cures, Jíwaka administered medicine to Budha in the perfume of a flower. The narrative must be given in the words of the MS.: “In this way was the medicine given. On a certain occasion when Budha was sick, it was thought that if he were to take a little opening medicine he would be better; and accordingly Ananda went to Jíwaka to inform him that the teacher of the world was indisposed. On receiving this information, Jíwaka, who thought that the time to which he had so long looked forward had arrived, went to the wihára, as Budha was at that time residing near Rajagaha. After making the proper inquiries, he discovered that there were three causes of the disease; and in order to remove them he prepared three lotus flowers, into each of which he put a quantity of medicine. The flowers were given to Budha at three separate times, and by smelling at them his bowels were moved ten times by each flower. By means of the first flower the first cause of disease passed away, and by the other two the second and third causes were removed.”
This legend is instructive in many ways. It shows us that 500 B.C. there were colleges in which medicine was taught, and that by special professors of the art, who received large fees from their pupils and kept them under instruction for many years. We find that the profession of medicine brought great honours and rewards to its adepts. We learn that trephining the skull for cerebral diseases was in use, and that the operation of opening the abdomen for bowel obstructions was understood. It reveals the important fact that already the whole of nature had been ransacked for remedies, and that everything was more or less useful to the physician. The great efficacy which the ancients attributed to perfumes is exhibited in the lotus story, which reminds us that when Democritus was aware that he was dying, he desired to prolong his life beyond the festival of Ceres, and accomplished his wish by inhaling the vapour of hot bread.
Galen’s description of the pulse in disease is very suggestive of the ancient Sanskrit treatises on the pulse; so much is this the case, it would seem, that either the Hindu physician must have copied from the Roman, or the Roman from the Indian. He speaks of the sharp-tailed or myuri, fainting myuri, recurrent myuri, the goat-leap or dorcadissans, a term derived from the animal dorcas, which, in jumping aloft, stops in the air, and then unexpectedly takes another and a swifter spring than the former. But if after the diastole it recur, and before a complete systole take place, strike the finger a second time; such a pulse is called a reverberating one, or dicrotos, from its beating twice. There is also the undulatory and vermicular pulse, the spasmodic and vibratory, the ant-like or formicans, from its resemblance to the ant (formica), on account of its smallness and kind of motion; there is the hectic, the serrated, the fat and the lean kind.
Medical etiquette amongst the Hindus was not overlooked.
“A physician who desires success in his practice, his own profit, a good name, and finally a place in heaven, must pray daily for all living creatures, first of the Brahmans and of the cow. The physician should wear his hair short, keep his nails clean[266] and cut close, and wear a sweet-smelling dress. He should never leave the house without a cane or umbrella; he should avoid especially any familiarity with women. Let his speech be soft, clear, pleasant. Transactions in the house should not be bruited abroad.”[267]
The dissection and examination of the dead subject is not practised in India, it is contrary to the tenets of the Brahmans; such knowledge of anatomy as the Hindus possess must therefore be little else than conjecture, formed by the study of the bodies of animals. Ainslie says[268] that the Rajah of Tanjore, in the year 1826, was a learned and enlightened prince, who was anxious to study the structure of the human body, but was too rigid a Hindu to satisfy his curiosity at the expense of his principles, so he ordered a complete skeleton made of ivory to be sent to him from England. Sir William Jones states that in a fragment of the Ayur-Veda he was surprised to find an account of the internal structure of the human frame.[269]
The ancient Hindus must have possessed considerable knowledge of surgery. In a commentary on Susruta made by Ubhatta, a Cashmirian, which may be as old, Ainslie thinks, as the twelfth century, many valuable surgical definitions are distinctly detailed. According to the best authorities, says Ainslie, surgery was of eight kinds: chedhana, cutting or excision; lekhana, or scarification and inoculation; vyadhana, puncturing; eshyam, probing or sounding; aharya, extraction of solid bodies; visravana, extracting fluids (by leeches and bleeding); sevana, or sewing; and bhedana, division or excision.[270]
Twelve species of leeches are enumerated in some of the Sanskrit works on surgery, six of which are poisonous and six useful medicinally.[271]