NEW DELHI, INDIA, February 23, 2015 (NDTV): Union Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan today claimed that modern medicine originated in India and that Indians had practiced inoculation against smallpox even before the vaccine for the disease was invented by Edward Jenner. Dr Vardhan, who is himself an ENT surgeon, said that most of what is taken to be modern medicine had come back to India through the “American route” after being first translated into Arabic and Persian in 9th century ce and, from that, into the European languages in the 17th century.
“When I studied the history of Ayurveda or what you can call Hindu medicine… I found that in the ninth century, the Caliph of Baghdad got all our knowledge of Ayurveda translated into the Arabic and Persian languages.”The same knowledge was again translated into the European languages in the 17th century and all that great knowledge has come back to us and it’s explained to us as modern medicine that has come through the route of the Americas.”But the origin of all this knowledge, if you go into the depth of this, was basically in India,” Dr Vardhan said at an international conference on the Vedas in New Delhi.
“All of us know that Edward Jenner was the man who invented the vaccination for smallpox, but our Vedas will tell that the Hindus and Mohammedans of this country had done smallpox inoculations hundreds of years before the vaccine was invented. So, it’s not about boasting, but the facts will all remain facts,” he said
The minister further said that even before the Hippocratic oath begun to be administered to medical professionals, Sushruta and Ashwini, the surgeons of ancient India, told people to practise the same.”Sushruta and all great surgeons taught to the whole world plastic surgery of nose. I have read in my own literature that surgical instruments were so precise, they split the hair into two,” the minister said.
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