Indian surgery (Sushruta Samhita)
Cirugía sistemática india (Sushruta Samhita: rinoplastia, catarata)
- Date
- c. 200 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Varanasi (Benares), India
- Credited to
- Sushruta and his school
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A treatise describing more than 120 surgical instruments and 300 procedures: nasal reconstruction with a forehead flap, couching for cataracts, lithotomy and ant-head suturing. The founding text of plastic surgery.
Sushruta's date ranges from the 6th century BCE to the 3rd century CE; the surviving text was compiled around the 3rd-4th centuries CE. Merged with the earlier record 'Ayurvedic medicine and Sushruta's surgery' (duplicate).
What it led to
- Surgical training with practice on models (gourds, animals)
- Modern plastic surgery (the Indian method reached London in 1794)
- Anatomy by dissection of macerated cadavers
- Transmission to Arab and Tibetan medicine
Built on
- Ayurvedic medicine
- Iron and steel metallurgy
- Egyptian surgery
- Atharvaveda and Vedic medicine
Made possible
- Surgical suture (needle, thread and catgut)c. 500 BCE
- Ammar al-Mawsili's hollow cataract needlec. 1010
- Low-cost intraocular lenses (Aurolab)1992
- Rhinoplasty
- Surgical instruments
- couching cataract surgery