Chapter 5 - Symptoms and treatment of Hoarseness (svarabheda)

Its causes.

It is due to the sound-carrying passages being choked with the abnormal excess of vayu, etc. owing to any one or some of these causes:—(1) speaking loudly, (2) taking of poison, (3) reading loudly and (4) physical shock received at the throat.

Hoarseness (svarabheda) is of six different kinds, according as it may be due to (a) vayu, (b) pitta (c) kapha, (d) a combination of the three, (e) excess of fat, and (f) consumption.

Treatment of hoarseness.

Note: Hoarseness due to consumption should be treated by medicines applicable in the latter.

Pestled leaves of badari, mixed with rock-salt and fried with clarified butter, is to be licked in cough and hoarseness.

Mriganabhyadi-abaleha.

Equal quantities of musk, small ela, lavanga, and bansha lochana are to be mixed together and taken (in doses of one rakti, each) with a little of clarified butter and honey. It cures hoarseness and stopage of voice.

Bhairava rasa.

Equal quantities of mercury, sulphur, aconite, borax, maricha, chavya, and roots of chitraka are to be rubbed together with the juice of ginger, and made into pills, three raktis in weight, each, to be taken with water. This medicine cures hoarseness(svarabheda), asthma, and cough.

Diet and actions salutary in hoarseness:—

fomentation, application of douche, smoking as in asthma, purgation, keeping constantly in mouth of such drugs as hingu, bacha, pippali, and khadira, all mixed with clarified butter, snuffs (having the property of removing those dosas causing the disease), letting out of blood in the forehead, taking of such foods as barley, red shali rice, soup prepared from the meat of ganders, ducks, wild cocks, peacocks, wine; such pot herbs as gokshura, kakamachi, jivanti, green raddish; grapes, haritaki, matulunga (citrus), garlics, rock-salt with ginger, betel leaves, maricha, and clarified butter.

Articles of food-stuff and deeds injurious in hoarseness:—

Unripe kapittha, bakula fruit, tuber of water-lily, jambu fruit, tinduka fruit, astringents, vomiting, sleeping, speaking in excess, and drinking of water after completion of meals.