Psychiatry

Treatment of people with mental problems, is not easy to understand. The word Psyche comes from Ancient Greek, for soul or butterfly. Wicked init? Ancient Greeks must have had few  hilarious conversations with this word...like "Man's soul flew to the heavans". "How many butterflies did he have?"

Now be serious and see what this psychiatry means huh? In the western civilisation (Greek, Roman)the so called psychotic people were supposed to have had this problem originated from supernatural.

In the 4th century BCE, Hippocrates theorized that physiological abnormalities may be the root of mental disorders.Religious leaders often turned to versions of exorcism to treat mental disorders often utilizing cruel and barbaric methods.[1]
 

According to old texts Indians were far more advanced in treatments for mental disorders. But they also started thinking that the problems were supernatural at the start, as in the ancient Indian scripture, Atharva-Veda. Ramayana and the Mahabharata has incidences of various disorders and how to cope with them.

Then in the 3rd and 4th century AD a guy called Sushruta, an Indian doctyor published a book called Sushrata Samhita.

The Sushruta Samhita contains 184 chapters and description of 1120 illnesses, 700 medicinal plants, a detailed study on Anatomy, 64 preparations from mineral sources and 57 preparations based on animal sources. It is the main reference book for ayurvedic surgeons. Sushshruta is considered as a great surgeon of ancient times.[2]

The diagnostic system based on four; cause (nidana), premonitary indications (purva-rupa), symptoms (rupa), therapeutic tests (upashaya)  and natural history of the developement of the disease ( samprapti).  the physician (chikitshak), The drug (dravya), the attendants or the nursing personal (upasthata) and the patient (rogi) are the four pillars on which the success of the therapy. Sushrata's manuscripts were translated to Arabic in the 8th century and infiltrated into Europe gradually.  He even wrote about plastic surgery.


I will put the links to the articles i read and wrote this blog at  the bottom, huh? I do not know whether anyone else has noted the fact that, in most of the present day medical people do not make any citations to the old Indian or any other civilisation's medicle discoveries they copied. Funny huh? Everything I learnt from the articles i read cannot be easily explained here. now don't be a lazy sloth, read the following.

I read this, this  and this







I am a selfish person. If you cannot find the links in this blog, I have majority of them filed, Email me!