Hindu treatises on medicine inform the physician that man’s constitution is occasioned by three dispositions born with him—_wadum_, _pittum_, and _chestum_, or wind, bile, and slime,—and it is the physician’s business to ascertain which of these predominate in any individual. These we may call the three morbiferous diatheses. The pulse is to be felt, not merely at the wrist as we feel it, but in ten different parts of the body. Some of the descriptions of the pulse are very curious. Sometimes, they say, it beats as a frog jumps, or as a creeping rain-worm, or like the motion of a child in a cradle hung in chains; at other times it is like a fowl when running or as a peacock when strutting, and so on. The Yantras or surgical implements known to Susruta were, according to Professor H. H. Wilson, one hundred and one, and are thus described by him in his most interesting paper on the “Medical and Surgical Sciences of the Hindus.”[274] The instruments were classed as Swastikas, Sandanśas, Tálayantras, Nádiyantras, Salákás, and Upayantras. The _Swastikas_ are twenty-four in number; they are metallic, about eighteen inches long, and fancifully shaped like the beaks of birds, etc. They were a sort of pincers or forceps. The _Sandanśas_ were a kind of tongs for removing extraneous substances from the soft parts. The _Tálayantras_ were similar, and were used for bringing away foreign bodies from the ears, nose, etc. The _Nádiyantras_ were tubular instruments, of which there were twenty sorts. They were similar to our catheters, syringes, etc. The _Salákás_ were rods and sounds, etc. Of these there were twenty-eight kinds; some were for removing nasal polypi, so common and so troublesome in India. The _Upayantras_ were such dressings as cloth, twine, leather, etc. The first, best, and most important of all implements is declared to be the _Hand_. The _Man’dalágra_ was a round pointed lancet; the _Vriddhipatra_ a broad knife; the _Arddhadhárás_ are perhaps knives with one edge; the _Trikúrchaka_ may be a sort of canular trochar, with a guarded point. The _Vrihimukha_ is a perforating instrument. The _Kutháriká_ was probably a bistoury. The _Vadiśa_ is a hooked or curved instrument for extracting foreign substances, and the _Dantaśanku_ appears to be an instrument for drawing teeth. The _Ará_ and _Karapatra_ are saws for cutting through bones. The _Eshan’i_ is a blunt straight instrument six or eight inches long—a sort of probe, in fact. The _Súchi_ is a needle. Then the Hindu surgeon had substitutes such as rough leaves that draw blood, pith of trees, skin, leeches, caustics, etc. It is evident that the surgeon of ancient India was not inefficiently armed.