HAND BOOK OF DOMESTIC MEDICINE AND COMMON AYURVEDIC REMEDIES

(i) Wash Muktā-Śukti thoroughly with boiling hot water. Dip washed material in a solution of three parts of water and one part of Nimbū Svarasa and boil for three hours in an earthen pot. Remove solid contents and dry. (ii) Wash the drug with warm water, place in an earthen pot, cover the drug with water and add Nimbū Svarasa one quarter of the quantity of water, boil for an hour, cool and decant water. Clean pieces of Śukti of froth and debris, dry and powder.

Reduce to powder and triturate in the Svarasa of Bhṛṅgarāja whole plant for seven days (seven Bhāvanā).

Reduce the drug to small pieces, soak in Gomūtra for twenty four hours, remove from Gomūtra and dry in shade.

Reduce Vatsanābha to small pieces and soak in Gomūtra for three days in a closed vessel changing the Gomūtra after every twenty four hours. Remove Gomūtra, wash Vatsanābha with water, digest with cow’s milk in Dolā Yantra for three hours and thereafter dry.

Soak seeds in Apāmārga Svarasa or salt water and dry in sun.

Reduce the drug to small pieces and soak in Gomūtra in closed vessel for seven days, change Gomūtra every twenty four hours for seven days. Remove the skin of the seeds as well as cotyledonous coat, prepare shreds and dry.

Digest the drug in cow’s milk in Dolā Yantra for three days.

To 50 ml. of Snuhī-latex, add 12 ml. Svarasa of Ciñcā fruit, mix well and filter through cloth. Dry the liquid portion in sun and use the sediment.

Fry Sphaṭika in the saucepan turning frequently till flowers of Sphaṭika appear.

Reduce the drug to small pieces, digest with Svarasa of Kuṣmāṇḍa fruit, or lime in Dolā Yantra for six hours over a mild fire.

Boil Ghṛta in a saucepan add clean dried latex of Hiṅgu till fried to a brown color.

Give seven Bhāvanā to the drug with Ārdraka Svarasa or Nimbū Svarasa or milk of sheep.

Heat pure Śaṅkha-480 g., Sphaṭika-60 g. and Narasāra-30 g. in an earthen pot, when liquid, spread uniformly on the top of a plantain leaf (unbroken) placed over a matting of Gomaya, quickly covered by another leaf of plantain (unbroken) allow to cool between the leaves.

Take 12 g. of Yavakuṭa drug in 750 ml. of water, boil in low heat reduce to half its weight, cool, strain through washed muslin.

Rasp the green vegetable drug into small pieces and powder well with a stone or wedged pestle and mortar. Transfer it to an enamelled utensil, add four times of its weight of water, mix and agitate briskly. Strain into another vessel, cover and allow to settle over night. Decant supernatant liquid, collect settled mass in a dry shallow vessel, cover it well and dry in shade.

Take an earthen pot or wooden barrel which is cleaned, fumigated by Dhūpa and coated inside with Ghṛta. Add to it water or Kvātha and dissolve in it the required quantity of Guḍa or Śarkarā or Madhu. Thereafter, add the Yavakuṭa (coarsely powdered) drugs in required quantity. Close the mouth of the vessel and allow the fermentation to proceed for one month in a warm place.

Generally for every 12.30 litres of liquid 4.8 kg. of Guḍa or Śarkarā or Madhu is required. In case of Drākṣā, Madhūka or Kharjūra which have high saccharine contents in themselves are to be added in Ariṣṭa or Āsava, then 3.6 kg. of Guḍa, Śarkarā or Madhu need only be used for every 12.30 litre of liquid. After fermentation drain off supernatant liquid in a vessel, filter it and fill in sterillised bottles up to the three fourth of its capacity and stopper it.

If Sandhāna is done by making the Kvātha of the drug then it is known as Ariṣṭa, but when the Sandhāna is done by adding the drugs directly to water, then it is known as Āsava.

Take 6 parts of Tila Taila if the Malhara (ointment) is required in summer and take 5 parts of Tila Taila if it is required in winter and add to it 1 part of Madhucchiṣṭa (wax). Melt by warming, mix well and cool.

1.Prepare Kvātha from 1 part of the drugs in 16 parts of water and reducing it to one fourth. Add to the filtrate of the Kvātha equal weight of Ghṛta or Taila. Boil and reduce to its half the volume or till no water remains in the mixture. Cool it and preserve for use.
2.Take 1 part of Kalka of green vegetable or prepare Kalka from 1 part of the powdered dry drugs in little quantity of water. Add of it 4 parts of Ghṛta or Taila and 16 parts of water. Boil it till Ghṛta or Taila only remains. Cool it and preserve for use.
3.In case Ghṛta is to be Siddha with hard drugs, first Kvātha of the drugs should be made then Ghṛta is to be prepared as mentioned above in the first method.
4.Sneha to be Siddha from a Svarasa should be prepared by the above process by taking 8 parts of Svarasa and 1 part of Ghṛta or Taila.
5.A well prepared Sneha should not give splashing noise of water on dripping it on fire, Kalka should separate from the Sneha, and Ghṛta should not cause any froth on Pāka while a Taila should be frothy on Pāka.

Add to 12 g. of Sphaṭika, 600 ml. of water in a bottle, stopper it and shake it after 15 minutes till Sphaṭika is dissolved. Filter through a washed muslin and use the filtrate.

1. For Green Drug: Collect green drug free from insects and infects, from a clean locality. Wash it with water, drain off excess water, cut into small pieces and grind slightly. Squeeze through a washed muslin and collect the liquid in a glass or porcelain vessel.
2. For Dried Drug: Obtain clean dry powder of the drug, add equal or double of its weight of water depending upon the nature of the drug and allow to macerate for twenty four hours in an earthen pot, glass or porcelain vessel. Thereafter, strain through a washed muslin into another earthen, glass or porcelain vessel.
3. Puṭapāka Svarasa: Bruise green drug in a mortar with pestle and make into a ball. Wrap it with leaves of Kamala or Vaṭa or Jambū or Eraṇḍa or Gambhārī and tie with a thread. Coat the threaded ball with a paste of wheat flour prepared in water and then apply a coating of wet clay to a thickness of two fingers. Fire the ball in Vanyopala (cow dung cakes) till clay burns to brown. Cool it, remove clay and unwrap thread and leaves used in wrapping. Press soaked material through a washed muslin and collect the juice in an earthen, glass or porcelain vessel.

Madhu, Śarkarā, Guḍa, Jīraka, Yavakṣāra, Saindhava, Ghṛta, Taila or any Cūrṇa, if to be added to the Svarasa in one dose then the quantity of these drugs should be 3 to 18 g.

See Śīta – Kaṣāya.

Even general rule regarding the doses of medicines will have exceptions. Various circumstances tend to modify the operation of medicines. Some of these are connected with the original conformations of the bodies, other with the age and the sex of the individual, some with the locality and circumstances in which he is placed as influencing a system by climate, temperament, diet and regimen, others again with the state of society, its customs, superstitions and even political relations and lastly some with the conditions of the mind displayed in the moral and intellectual endowments.

In prescribing medicines, therefore, age, sex, strength, weight, diet, profession, climate, duration of the disease, state of the stomach, idiosyncrasy and habits of life should be kept in view. Women generally require smaller doses than men and the state of underlying functions can not be over-looked.

Temperament: Stimulants and purgatives readily affect to the more fragmetic. Thus, stimulating medicines have to be prescribed with caution on such persons while on the contrary in the melancholic the same class of medicines required to be freely prescribed in much greater frequency as compared to that admissible to other temperaments.

Habits: Generally frequent repetition tend to habituate a patient with the result that the medicines become less effective.

Climate: Climate modifies the medicines viz. (i) through changes brought about in the animal frame and (ii) by the changes the vegetable medicines undergo due to the climate.

Prakṛti: Constitutional (Prakṛti) peculiarities cannot be ignored in determining the frequency of doses of medicines. Some physicians believe the regulation of frequency of doses is best done by giving a dose second time when the effect of the first dose is found gradually going down, while others opine that the dose should be maintained till health is restored.

The doses prescribed in the ancient texts like Caraka Saṁhitā appear to be high in the present circumstances. It is on account of these factors that no clear cut directions are available so as to form a rule determination of doses and frequency of medication. The position is still more delicate in relation to the dose for the young.

Kāśyapa Saṁhitā is the most dependable treatise on posology of the children. Kāśyapa recommends that for vegetable drugs the dose for the new born should be equal to the weight of the fruit of Viḍaṅga, which should be raised month to month by addition of the weight of a Viḍaṅga in the initial dose till the dose attains the weight of an Āmalakī at the age of fifteen years.

Suśruta has recommended the determination of doses according to the infant. The infant upto the age of one year is considered solely dependable on milk when the dose recommended is the weight carried by the fore-finger and the index finger to the depth of the first Parva. For infants partly milk fed and parlty cereal fed (about the age of two years) the dose should be equal to the fruit of Badara.

Thus it could be seen that the doses recommended are impracticable in modern times. Considereing these factors, the doses for different classes of Āyurvedic preparations have been adopted in this book on the basis of tradition and wherever any difference of opinion and variations were observed the posology of Bhaiṣajya Ratnāvalī has been followed. However, for the sake of convenience a posological table (Table-3) has been compiled taking into account all the above factors with a view to provide clear cut and simple directions for determintiaon of dose at different ages for the children.

For infants from 1 to 6 month Vaṭī and Cūrṇa should be taken either powdered or ground. For infants from 1 month above the dose should be restricted to a fraction of the dose for the child of one year. Medicines may be given in mother’s milk or honey.