This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Samskara (Ayurvedic) is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Samskara is a process in Ayurvedic medicine of detoxification applied to heavy metals and toxic herbs, which is similar to the Chinese pao zhi.
In Ayurveda, toxic medicinals including heavy metals are purified using a process of prayer and pharmacy, both of which are necessary to transform the toxicity. This may require multiple years of use. An intriguing study of samskara-processed aconite was recently published: [1]
Crude aconite is an extremely lethal substance. However, the science of Ayurveda looks upon aconite as a therapeutic entity. Crude aconite is always processed i.e. it undergoes 'samskaras' before being utilised in the Ayurvedic formulations. This study was undertaken in mice, to ascertain whether 'processed' aconite is less toxic as compared to the crude or unprocessed one. It was seen that crude aconite was significantly toxic to mice (100% mortality at a dose of 2.6 mg/mouse) whereas the fully processed aconite was absolutely non-toxic (no mortality at a dose even 8 times as high as that of crude aconite). Further, all the steps in the processing were essential for complete detoxification. [2]
It should be noted that the cited paper makes no mention of prayer being employed during the detoxification, which calls into question its necessity in the process.
The described detoxification is a simple chemical processing which involves four successive rounds of boiling the crude root in cow's urine (twice) and cow's milk (twice). Such processing is reasonably expected to chemically modify both toxic and proposed therapeutic components of the root. It will also lead to extraction of these compounds from the root into the boiling solvents, thereby decreasing their concentration in the final product.
It should also be noted that, while these washes appear to ameliorate the toxicity of the crude root, there is no evidence that the processed root has any therapeutic value.
References
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 16 February 2008, at 09:29.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Samskara (Ayurvedic)".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.