Explain Sushruta’s life and his contribution towards science.
Answers
Maharishi Shushruta is a legendry scholar of the Indian medical science and founding father of surgery. 2600 Yrs ago Maharishi Shushruta together with his colleagues had conducted the variety of complex surgeries such as caesareans, artificial limbs, cataract, urinary stones, fractures, and most specially the plastic surgery. A famous book (Shalya Tantra) has been described by the Shushruta about all the surgical procedures. Shalya Tantra was later named as the Sushruta Samhita (have details about the ancient medical science of India, well known as the Ayurveda). Maharishi Shushruta is the author of Sushruta Samhita in Sanskrit language and had described all the amazing surgical procedures with the accuracy and curative efficacy. His great findings have become an essential component of the Indian culture.
Maharishi Shushruta, a great sage, is commonly considered as the son of wise Visvamitra. The father of the Sushruta Samhita was the first person who had classified the surgical operations and explained the plastic surgery as well as its tools in his book of 120 chapters in five parts. He had described around eight special operations for surgery, such as the cutting, piercing, opening, scratching, inserting, and stitching. Maharishi Shushruta had worked as both, the practitioner and the teacher of surgery. His contribution towards the Indian traditional medicine and the ancient cultural heritage of India will always be a precious.
After his great writing, he had become very famed personality and his writing was first translated into the Arabic language. Consequently, it got translated into the Latin and English languages. Maharishi Shushruta had become a worldwide legend and famous in many areas like doing surgery of the eye, amputations of the limbs and handling various complications after childbirth.
The Sushruta samhita has two parts, first one is known as the Purva-tantra and the second one is known as the Uttara-tantra. These two parts together cover all the other specialties such as the medicine, geriatrics, pediatrics, ear diseases, diseases of the nose, throat, eye, aphrodisiacs, toxicology, and psychiatry. Hence, The Sushruta samhita is an encyclopaedia of the medical learning for doctors with special importance on the Salya and Salakya. There are five books of the Purvatantra having 120 chapters are Sutra sthana, Sarira sthana, Nidana sthana, Chikitsa sthana and Kalpa sthana.
Having knowledge about the aetiology, signs symptoms of various significant surgical diseases and their ailments, was not easy before the Sushruta samhita.
The Kalpa sthana is generally known as the Visa tantra which describes the nature of poisons as well as the management. Hence, the Purvatantra holds four branches of Ayurveda. And the Uttaratantra holds the other four specialties that are Salakya, Kayacikitsa, Kaumarabhfefefrtya and Bhutavidya.
Maharishi Shushruta has described in his writings that the hemorrhage can be easily arrested by the apposition of cutting edges with the stitches, through the cauterization with chemicals or heat and application of styptic decoction etc. According to the Shushruta, the wound is an ultimate abrasion of the underlying pathological structure which starts with the inflammation. He says that the ulcer is totally unclean in the first stage, so it is called as the dusta vrana.
He was the pioneer of anesthesia and has promoted the proper use of wine with incense of cannabis for the anesthesia purpose. The use of henbane and Sammohini and Sanjivani was started in the later period. He had explained the eight types of surgical procedures such as the excision, incision, scraping, puncturing, probing, sravana, apposition, stitching. He had developed the variety of experimental modules for practicing surgical procedures. Incision and excision can be practiced on the vegetables or on the leather bags filled with mud of different densities. He had also classified the bones along with their reaction to injuries. He had described the six types of dislocation of joints and twelve varieties of fractures of the shaft together with the principles of fracture treatment such as traction, manipulation, appositions and stabilization.
Sushruta discussed the surgical conditions of ano-rectal region and provided all the methods of managing both haemorrhoids and fistulae.
Plastic surgery
He had described all the basic principles of plastic surgery by offering a suitable physiotherapy before operation.
Legacy
The Bower manuscript which was founded in a Buddhist monastery in Chinese mentions the name of Susrutha as one of the 10 sages from Himalayas. It is reported that the first Indian rhinoplasty was performed by the local Vaidya of Koomhar caste using skin of the forehead.