This section is from the book "The Sushruta Samhita", by Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna. Also available from Amazon: The Sushruta Samhita.
The intelligent physician should adopt the following course of treatment in the case of a Madhu-Meha-patient abandoned as incurable by other physicians. 2.
A kind of gelatinous substance is secreted from the sides of the mountains when they have become heated by the rays of the sun in the months of Jyaishtha and Ashádha. This substance is what is known as the Silájatu and it cures all distempers of the body.
The presence of the six kinds of metal, such as tin, lead, copper, silver, gold and black-iron, in their essen-tial form in the substance (Silájatu), may be detected by their respective smell and hence it is known to the people by the name of Shad-Yoni (lit. - having six different origins). The taste of this shellac-coloured substance has the same taste (Rasa) and potency (Virya) as the metal to whose essence it owes its origin. It should be understood that as tin, lead and iron, etc., are progressively more and more efficacious, so the different varieties of Silájatu, originated from the essence of tin, lead, iron, etc., are progressively more efficacious in their application.
All kinds of Silájatu have a bitter and pungent taste with an astringent after-taste (Anu-rasa), are laxative, pungent in their digestionary reaction, heat-making in their poteney and possessed of absorbing and purifying (Chhedana) properties. Of these what looks black and glossy, is heavy and devoid of sandy particles, as well as what smells like the urine of a cow, should be considered as the best. This best kind of Silájatu should be infused with the decoction of the drugs of the Sála-sárádi group after the manner of Bhávaná saturation (for ten, twenty or thirty days). Then after cleansing the body (by the application of emetics and purgatives), it should be taken every morning (by the patient in adequate doses), well pasted with Sárodaka.* He should further be made to take a meal of boiled rice mixed with the soup of the flesh of animals of the Jángala group after the medicine had been fully digested. 3-4.
A Tula measure of this hill-begotten panacea (Silájatu), when gradually taken, (in adequade doses) tends to improve the strength and complexion of the body, cures an attack of Madhu-Meha and enables the user to witness a hundred summers on earth, free from disease and decay. Each Tula weight of this medicine, taken successively, adds a century to the duration of human life, while ten Tula measures extend it to a thousand years. The regimen of diet and conduct during the period of its use should be identical with that described in connection with the use of the Bhallátaka compounds. Cases of Meha, Kush-tha, epilepsy (Apasmára), insanity, elephantiasis, poison-begotten distempers, phthisis, aedema, haemorrhoids, Gulma (internal tumours), jaundice and chronic fever, prove readily amenable to the curative efficacy of Silájatu. Indeed there is no such bodily distemper which does not yield to its highly curative virtues. It acts as a potent solvent in cases of long-standing Sarkará (gravel) in the bladder as well as of stone. Silájatu should be treated (soaked and dried) with appropriate medicinal drugs by stirring it up with the same. 5.
* It is evident from the reading of Chakradatta that "Sárodaka" means a decoction of the drugs of the Sátla-Sárádi group. But Dallana explains it as "Pancha-sárodaka" which is quite unintelligible. In practice, also, Chakradatta is followed. - Ed.
 
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