Ayurveda therapies have varied and evolved over more than two millennia. Ancient ayurveda texts also taught surgical techniques, including rhinoplasty , lithotomy , sutures, cataract surgery , and the extraction of foreign objects. Historical evidence for ayurvedic texts, terminology and concepts appears from the middle of the first millennium BCE onwards. In ayurveda texts, dosha balance is emphasized, and suppressing natural urges is considered unhealthy and claimed to lead to illness.
Ayurveda treatises divide medicine into eight canonical components. Ayurveda practitioners had developed various medicinal preparations and surgical procedures from at least the beginning of the common era. Ayurveda has been adapted for Western consumption, notably by Baba Hari Dass in the s and Maharishi ayurveda in the s.
Although some Ayurvedic treatments can help relieve the symptoms of cancer, there is no good evidence that the disease can be treated or cured through ayurveda. Some ayurvedic preparations have been found to contain lead , mercury , and arsenic , [ 11 ] [ 23 ] substances known to be harmful to humans.
The earliest classical Sanskrit works on ayurveda describe medicine as being divided into eight components Skt. The central theoretical ideas of ayurveda show parallels with Samkhya and Vaisheshika philosophies, as well as with Buddhism and Jainism. According to ayurveda, the human body is composed of tissues dhatus , waste malas , and humeral biomaterials doshas.
Like the medicine of classical antiquity, the classic treatises of ayurveda divided bodily substances into five classical elements panchamahabhuta viz. The three postulated elemental bodily humours, the doshas or tridosha , are vata air, which some modern authors equate with the nervous system , pitta bile, fire, equated by some with enzymes , and kapha phlegm, or earth and water, equated by some with mucus.
