This volume is the third of the medical publications in the Saraswathi Mahal Series. The previous two volumes issued by us dealt with Stomach Ailments (Sarabendra Gunma Roga Chikitsai.) and Maternity and Child Treatment. Garbhini Balaroga Chikitsai). This volume contains prescriptions for the Diseases of the Eye. Our Library contains fifteen more volumes to be published in the series and they relate to the following subjects: - 1. Bar, Nose, Throat and Head Diseases. 2. Lung Diseases. 3. Diabetes. 4. Rheumatism. Paralysis, Lumbago etc. 5. Diseases resulting from fever. 6. Treatment for fever. 7. Anaemia. 8. Piles. 9. Leprosy. 10. Venereal Diseases. 11. Itches. Boils Ulcers etc. 12. Purgatives and Treatment for Diarrhoea. 13. Wounds, Injuries, Cancers etc. 14. Delirium, 15. Treatment for Poisons. Some of these volumes are now in the press and others are under preparation. Theses medical works are part of the great legacy bequeathed to our country by Maharaja Serfoji, who reigned in Tanjore from 1798 to 1832, and who is justly famous as a Scholar-king. The Saraswathi Mahal Library in Tanjore is veritable ocean of manuscripts and printed works in many languages, and on a wide variety of subjects, collected and preserved by him with great care, is a lasting tribute to Serfoji's many sided intellect and encyclopedic knowledge, But the scholarship of Serfoji was not merely bookish. It assumed various practical forms. One of the farreaching the consequences of his endless curiosity and research was the establishment of an institution in Tanjore called Dhanvantari Mahal. In it, he had assembled distinguished physicians who laboured together, pooled their knowledge dand recorded their research in the shape of invaluable prescriptions. They carried on research under his patronage by a comparative study of cures in various systems of medicine and recorded the result of their collaboration in the prescriptions now available in these eighteen volumes. Raja Serfoji was not contented with setting down the prescriptions as such. His ambition was to render the prescriptions capable of being easily memorised, according to the practice of his times. Consequently he had these prescription composed in easy. Tamil varses on palm leaves each volume containing a collection of tested prescriptions for individual and allied diseases. The present volume is called in Tamil "SARABENDRA NAYANA ROGA CHIKITSAI" or "SERFOJI'S TREAT MENT FOR EYE-DISEASES." This work was edited with the help of the veteran Eye Doctor, Sri T.S. Amirdalingam Pillai who was for some time Professor of Ophthalmology in the Government College of Indian Medicine. It may be stated that all these prescriptions have been in use ever since the days of Serfoji. In fact they are in Tanjore called "Gura mumpast" (Recipes tested by experience). Even today, in many quarters these prescriptions are used. and members of the Royal family still possess many of the medicines prepared in the Dhanvantari Mahal by a special process called KATTU (a) by which the potency of the conserved for a long period of years. These special medicines in the shape of pills still bear indicative of the names of the medicines In the work on hand, we have given the verses of each recipe as we find them in the original and also an analysis of the ingredients to enable practitioners to follow them easily. We have also appended two lists of eye-disease with their symptoms, one according to sage Agastyar's classification in Tamil and the other according to Ayur vedic works in Sanskrit. The text of this and other Tamil manuscripts, especially in this series, abounds in grammatical and syntaxical errors. The more obvious of them, we have ventured to correct. But we have preferred not to interfere in other cases, lest we should unwittingly err by presuming to correct the text for the sake of grammar.
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