Note 12 — Chapter III · ORIENTAL MEDICINE (Continued)

From Neuburger.—Equally crude are their ideas respecting the causes of disease, as shown by the following items selected from quite a long list of etiological factors: errors in diet and in the habits of life, climatic influences, psychic factors, heredity, poison, supernatural influences like the anger of the gods, the evil powers of demons, etc. For purposes of diagnosis the earlier Indian physicians utilized not only inspection, palpation and auscultation, but also the senses of taste and smell. They noted the losses and increases in the weight of the body, changes in the appearance of the skin, the tongue and the excretions, alterations in the configuration of the body, the form and other characteristics of swellings, etc. They also noted changes in the patient’s voice, in the character of the breathing, in the noises accompanying movements of the joints and the twistings of the intestines. The crepitus caused by the rubbing together of the roughened ends of a fractured bone did not escape their notice. At a later period, doubtless through the influence of the teachings of foreign physicians, they attached great importance to the examination of the pulse.