Ayurveda grew into a respected and widely used system of healing in India. Having influenced many of the other older traditional methods of healing including Tibetan, Chinese and Greek medicine, it is rightly considered as the ‘Mother of healing sciences’. Every occidental and Asian civilization has borrowed Ayurvedic knowledge and applied it to their cultural context and medical system. Plastic surgery, acupuncture, disease classification, organization of medical schools – all stem from the Ayurvedic tradition. Further to the classic text period Ayurveda delineated eight specific branches:

1. Kayachikitsa – Medicine
2. Shalya-tantra – General surgery
3. Shalakya-tantra – Ophthalmology and Otorhinolaryngology
4. Agada-tantra – Toxicology and jurisprudence
5. Rasayana – Geriatrics
6. Vajikarana – Fertility and sterility
7. Bhuta-vaidya – Psychiatry
8. Kaumarabritya – Paediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynaecology

The fact that kayachikitsa or treatment with drugs was an evolved specialization is evident from the extensive Ayurvedic materia medica which represents full utilization of environmental resources. More than 600 drugs of animal, plant and mineral origin are used in Charaka Samhita and about 650 in Sushruta Samhita. At the beginning of the 20th century Paul Ehrlich introduced the western world to the concept of targeting drugs to the site of action. This concept was used in India since the teaching of Charaka who wrote among other texts, the Adhisthana in the 1st century AD, in which he described using drugs that have an affinity for specific tissues.

Surgery was at its best in the pre-Buddhist era with description of various operative techniques and procedures like abdominal operations for intestinal obstruction and removal of bladder stones; plastic surgery like rhinoplasty; operations for delivering the foetus; amputation of limbs, treatment of complicated fractures and dislocations; treatment of piles and fistula, cataracts and complicated ophthalmic operations; correction of strangulated hernia; intestinal perforations and visceral protrusions due to accidental injuries being described in the Sushruta Samhita.

Surgery was considered the best, quickest and generally the most successful method of treatment, as it involves total removal of the diseased part or morbid accumulation of doshas, dhatus and malas and gives the organism a better chance to acquire a new equilibrium by post-surgical medication to replenish removed tissues, fluids and secretions. A great variety of surgical accessories namely bandages, splints and plasters made of an assortment of materials like horse-mane, human hair, silk, vegetable oils, pulverized cereals as also surgical instruments including scalpels, razors, saws, probes, needles, hooks, forceps, pincers, hammers, tubular appliances, hollow hemispheres are described in the Sushruta Samhita. He describes 8 broad groups of surgical procedures, 101 different types of blunt surgical instruments and 24 types of sharp surgical instruments. Sushruta’s classification of surgical instruments is considered complete in every respect even today.

Historical evidence of rhinoplasty practised as late as the 18th century indicates the technical expertise available and today it is actually being incorporated in modern plastic surgery. Earlier British physicians travelled to India to study rhinoplasty using a flap of skin from the forehead being performed by Indians. Reports on Indian rhinoplasty were published in the Gentleman’s Magazine by 1794. Joseph Constantine Carpue spent 20 years in India studying local plastic surgery methods and he was able to perform the ‘Indian’ method of nose reconstruction in the western world by 1815.

The uncanny observations of Sushruta on the spread of infectious diseases through physical contact are an obvious forerunner to Joseph Lister’s germ theory and antisepsis.