This section is from the book "The Sushruta Samhita", by Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna. Also available from Amazon: The Sushruta Samhita.
A country may be classed either as an Anupa, Jangala or a Sadharana one, according to its distinctive physical features. An Anupa (watery or swampy) country contains a large number of pools, and is wooded and undulated with chains of lofty hills traversing its area, and which is impassable owing to its net-works of rivers and sheets of accumulated rain-water rippling before the currents of the gentle, humid air. It is inhabited by a race of stout, shapely and soft-bodied men, susceptible to Vatala and Kaphaja diseases.
The country, which presents a flat surface and whose dull monotony is enlivened here and there by scanty growths of thorny shrubs and the tops of a few isolated hills or knolls, and in which the waters from springs and wells, accumulated during the rains, become nearly drained, and strong gales of warm wind blow (during the greater part of the year) making its inhabitants, though thin, strong, tough, and sinewy in their frames, subject to attacks of diseases, is called Jangala. A country, which exhibits features common to both the aforesaid classes, is called Sadharana or ordinary.
A country derives the epithet of Sadharana from the ordinary character of its heat, cold and rainfall, and from the fact of the bodily humours maintaining their normal state of equilibrium within its confines. A disease originated in, and peculiar to a particular country fails to gain in intensity, if brought over to, and transplanted in a country of a different character. A man, who observes a regimen of diet and conduct soothing to the deranged bodily humours accumulated in the country he has come from, and aggravated and manifest in the shape of a disease in the country he has been living for the time being, need not apprehend any danger from the altered conditions of his new abode, for the fact of his not observing a regimen of diet and conduct regarded beneficial in consideration of the physical features of the latter place. A disease of recent growth' or origin unattended with any distressing or unfavourable complications, and unsuited to the nature of the country *, the season of the year, † the temperament, ‡ and § the adopted or congenial or naturalised traits of the physique of a patient with a regular and unimpaired state of digestion (Samagni), and who exhibits traits of strength, fortitude and longevity and commands the co-operation of the four commendable factors of a course of medical treatment, readily yields to medicine.
A disease, which is marked by features other than those described above, should be regarded as incurable, while the one exhibiting traits common to both the abovesaid types, should be looked upon as extremely hard to cure.
In the case of a former medicine proving abortive, a different one should not be resorted to as long as the effect of the first would last, inasmuch as a mixture or a confusion of medicinal remedies tends to produce a positively injurious effect. A medicine or any medicinal measure, failing to produce any tangible effect, may be repeated in quick succession in a difficult or dangerous disease, if it be empirically found to be beneficial in the case under treatment. The intelligent physician, who, considering the nature of the season, etc., fully conforms to the abovesaid rules of medical treatment, conquers the bodily distempers and dispels the gloom of Death from the world with his medical skill.
* As the development of a disease due to the deranged Kapham in a country of the Jangala type.
† As the attack of a bilious distemper in forewinter, or of a Vataja malady in autumn, or of a Kaphaja affection in summer.
‡ As the appearance of Kaphaja disease in a patient of bilious temperament.
§ As the appearance of a Kaphaja disease in a subject habituated to the use of viands of pungent taste.
Thus ends the Thirty-fifth Chapter of the Sutrasthanam in the Sushrula Samhita, which treats of clinical observations.
 
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