Ayurvedic Medicine

Ayurveda (; IAST: āyurveda) is an alternative medicine system with historical roots in the Indian subcontinent. It is heavily practised throughout India and Nepal, where as much as 80% of the population report using ayurveda. The theory and practice of ayurveda are pseudoscientific, and ayurvedic preparations, particularly in the rasa shastra tradition, contain toxic levels of lead, mercury, and arsenic. Ayurveda therapies have varied and evolved over more than two millennia. Therapies include herbal medicines, special diets, meditation, yoga, massage, laxatives, enemas, and medical oils. Early ayurvedic preparations were almost entirely based on complex herbal compounds based on the materia medica of South Asia. Iron tonics have an ancient history in ayurveda, but minerals and other metal substances began to enter the traditional pharmacopoeia more pervasively after the eleventh century, under the influence of early Indian alchemy or rasashastra. Ancient ayurveda texts also taught surgical techniques, including rhinoplasty, lithotomy, sutures, cataract surgery, and the extraction of foreign objects. Historical evidence for ayurvedic terminology and concepts appear in the Buddhist Canon from the middle of the first millennium BCE onwards. The main classical ayurveda texts are datable in their present form to the first centuries CE. Like many texts from Classical Antiquity, these texts begin with accounts of the transmission of medical knowledge from the gods to sages and then to human physicians. Printed editions of the Sushruta Samhita (Sushruta's Compendium), frame the work as the teachings of Dhanvantari, the Hindu deity of ayurveda, incarnated as King Divodāsa of Varanasi, to a group of physicians, including Sushruta. The oldest manuscripts of the work, however, omit this frame, ascribing the work directly to King Divodāsa. In ayurveda texts, dosha balance is emphasised, and suppressing natural urges is considered unhealthy and claimed to lead to illness. Ayurveda treatises describe three elemental doshas: vāta, pitta and kapha, and state that balance (Skt. sāmyatva) of the doshas results in health, while imbalance (viṣamatva) results in disease. Ayurveda treatises divide medicine into eight canonical components. Ayurveda practitioners had developed various medicinal preparations and surgical procedures from at least the beginning of the common era. Ayurveda has been adapted for Western consumption, notably by Baba Hari Dass in the 1970s and Maharishi ayurveda in the 1980s. Although some ayurvedic treatments can help relieve some symptoms of cancer, there is no good evidence that the disease can be treated or cured through ayurveda.