Chapter 23 - Bhrama (vertigo), Nidra (sleeping disease), and Tandra (drowsiness)

Their causes and symptoms.

Murcha (fainting fit) is due to pitta and tamas.^[1] Vertigo is due to vayu, pitta, and rajas. Drowsiness is due to tamas, vayu, and kapha; and sleep is due to kapha and tamas.

In vertigo (bhrama), the whole body, and especially the head, appear to reel. Every thing, outside the patient, also appears to whirl round him. At the time he feels this sensation, he is unable to stand steadily on his legs.

In sleep (nidra), the fatigue of the mind is followed by the fatigue of the sense-organs and their consequent withdrawal from the objective world.

In drowsiness (tandra), there is absence of perception of the objective world, appearance of heaviness of the body, yawning, fatigue, and the other characteristics of sleep.

Treatment of Vertigo: Simple remedies.

(1) Vertigo is cured by drinking (a) milk boiled with roots of shatavari, roots of bala, and raisins, and mixed with sugar; or (b) seeds of bala, or (c) decoction of duralabha mixed with clarified butter, (d) decoction of triphala, or (e) milk.

(2) Use of medicines called rasayana (those which not only cure diseases but do away with senile decay also), or rubbing the head with Clarified butter of ten years’ standing may also be prescribed. It should also be drunk.

(3) Four tolas, each, of shunthi, pippali, shata-puspa, and haritaki, and twenty four tolas of molasses are to be rubbed together, and made into pills (half a tola in weight, each). This medicine cures vertigo.

(4) Incinerated copper, mixed with decoction of duralabha and clarified butter, is to be taken for the cure of vertigo.

Iatro-chemical remedies in vertigo.

The same as in murcha.

Dietary, etc, in bhrama:

The same as in murcha.

Treatment of sleepiness and drowsiness: Simple remedies.

(1) Both the diseases are cured by the application in the eyes of a collyrium prepared from (1) horse’s saliva, rock-salt, camphor, manas-shila, pippali, and honey, all pestled together, or (2) seeds of shirisha, garlics, pippali, rock-salt, and realgar, all finely powdered and pestled together, (3) One suffering from drowsiness should be allowed to sleep, as much as one can, on a comfortable bed.

Iatro-chemical remedies and Dietary in sleepiness and drowsiness:

The same as in swoon.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Indian philosophers attribute three different properties to mind, viz. sattva (refinement, sobriety, wisdom, and consciousness), rajas (excitement, activity, and egoism), and tamas (ignorance and absence of consciousness).