Publisher's Synopsis
Nature has blessed India with a vast variety of herbal and medicinal plants and shrubs that grows in different climatic regions from the frozen Himalayas in the north to the tropical forests in the south. From times this immemorial rich beauty has been used in preparing herbal medicine to cure various disease and to promote a great repository of this knowledge, organized in the from of unani and ayurvedic herbal systems of medicine.The system has a mass following and word wide acceptability.UNANI was derived from the word IONIAN which indicates it origin to Greece TIBB means medicine. Unani system of medicine is a synthesis of Greek and Arabs system. Unani physicians were the first to classify the disease on the basis of different anatomical and physiological symptoms of the body. Hippocrate (460-377BC) who firstly postulated the concept of disease is due to the imbalance of humors and hence emphasized on natural knowledge and hence freed Medicine from the realm of superstition and magic, and gave it the status of science. Arab physicians introduced unani pathy in India which took firms root in the soil soon. Unani pathy had its days in India during 13th and 17th century's .soon it spread all over the country and remained popular among the masses, even after the downfall of Mughal Empire. It got a set back during British rule but still remained in practice as it enjoyed the faith of masses. The unani pathy survived during British rule due to the efforts of the sharifi family in delhi.the Azizi family of Lucknow and the Nizams of Hyderabad. Hakim ajmal khan (1868-1927) from sharifi family was an outstanding physicians and scholar of unani medicine kept the tempo high. Unani medicine, as is well known, based on the Hippocratic humoral theory. This theory supposes the presence of four humuors in the body viz: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. The mizaj of individuals are expressed by word damawi (sanguine), balghami (phlegmatic), safrawi (choleric) and saudawi (melancholic) according to the dominancy of the humour. Every person is supposed to have a unique humoral constitution which represents his healthy state and any change in this state causes illness of the said person. The severity of the disease depends directly upon the change in equilibrium from mizaj. There are three major quwa (faculties) which regulate human body viz. Quwwate nafsania (psychic faculties), Quwwate haivania (vital faculties) and Quwwate tabiyya (physical faculties). These quwa (faculties) are specific for a particular tissue or organ on which the specific functions of that organ depend. Quwwate tabiyya is concerned with taghzia (nutrition), namu (growth) and tawleed (reproduction) and jigar is considered uzwe raees (epicenter) of this quwwat. Quwwate haivaniya is concerned with tadbeer of rooh, which brings life to the part it supplies. Qalb is uzwe raees of this faculty. Quwwat nafsania is concerned with intellect, sensory and motor functions and dimagh (brain) is supposed to be seat of this faculty.
