Sushruta Statue Unveiled at Royal College of Surgeons

#GS-1 #History #Ancient India #Culture #Heritage #Science & Technology #Medicine #Current Events

Context

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in Scotland unveiled a 90-kilogram bronze statue to honor the ancient Indian physician Sushruta.
This institution is widely considered the oldest surgical college in the entire world.

Sushruta was a legendary ancient Indian physician and surgeon who is celebrated around the globe as the Father of Plastic Surgery and the Father of Surgery.
He pioneered complex operations, body dissections, and medical education thousands of years before similar practices started in the West.
Historians believe he lived and practiced approximately 2,600 years ago around 600 BCE.
He performed advanced surgeries a millennium before Hippocrates and two millenniums before European doctors like Celsus and Galen started practicing.

Sushruta wrote down his medical and surgical knowledge in the *Sushruta Samhita*, which is one of the most detailed surviving medical books from the ancient world.
The book is divided into two main parts: the Purva-tantra, which covers surgery, internal medicine, anatomy, and pediatrics, and the Uttara-tantra, which covers eye, ear, nose, throat, and psychiatry.
The text documents a massive medical collection that includes 1,120 distinct illnesses and medical conditions.
It describes over 700 medicinal plants and hundreds of treatments from animal and mineral sources.
The book details more than 300 complex medical and surgical operations.
It also explains around 120 unique and specialized surgical instruments.

His most famous achievement is developing rhinoplasty, which is the surgical rebuilding of a cut nose using skin from the forehead or cheek.
He grouped all operations into eight main methods called the Ashtavidha Shastrakarma, covering excision, incision, scraping, puncturing, probing, extraction, drainage, and suturing.
He created a classification system for burns, heat stroke, frostbite, and lightning strikes long before Western medicine did.
He identified lifestyle conditions that look very similar to modern diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
He made it mandatory for medical students to practice on inanimate objects to build precision before treating human patients.