5.4. The Physician (vaidya)

Kṣemendra has hard hit against the corrupt physicians also. He observes that such physicians are looting money from the common people in the name of treatment. He satirizes the physician who is devoid of knowledge but a treasure house of all evil acts.

The author pours bitterness against the physician who like a serpent is the cause of many people’s untimely death.^[1] Kṣemendra remarks satirically that he is a heartless rogue and a crafty physician who even does not know who is Caraka.^[2] He claims that the physician goes house to house treating the patients but he is unaware of basic medicine and symptoms of diseases as is mentioned in the work of Caraka. In Kṣemendra’s word, the physician is originally a fool, who keeps a list of medicine with him as if a messenger of death.^[3] He ridicules the physician when he says that, the physician cannot eliminate patient’s maladies but their money.^[4] He compares such physician with poison (kālakūṭa), serpant (vyāla) or vampire (vetāla).^[5] According to Kṣemendra, the wicked physician becomes very happy if someone is sick due to overeating in the occasions like marriage ceremony etc.^[6] He expresses his dissatisfaction with such type of physician whose one single touch of hand destroys the organs of the body.^[7] Unhappy Kṣemendra therefore raises the question as to why the physician is called a master of life (prānācārya).^[8] He condemns such physician who with different medicines keeps experimenting and kills thousands of patients to establish himself.^[9] According to him, the physician may be compared with unbearable heat of summer that makes one so thirsty because the physician suck people dry even who is suffering from serious disease.^[10] If the physician is called upon to visit a patient he comes immediately with a hope of gaining a big sum of money.^[11] But soon his knowledge is exposed to all.

The author exposes that the physician is not only a hypocrite but also a mean fellow, who touches the private parts of a woman during her treatment.^[12] Kṣemendra condemns him as the destroyer of the mankind.^[13]