e
course of communication between the East and West, can we doubt that an
extensive intercourse must have taken place, and should we not expect to
find some traces, if not the effects, of Indian science on the teaching
of the Arabian school.[1]

[Footnote 1: As to communication, the case of Saggid Mahmud (given
in Bellew's _Indus to the Tigris_), who, merely to pray for the
recovery of his sick son, travelled with him from Ghazni by way of
Kandahur and Shikarpur to Bombay, thence by way of sea to Baghdad,
from there to Karbola, and back to Baghdad; and then by Kirmanshah
and Kum to Teheran, on his way home to Ghazni, gives an indication
of the long journeys taken under the most frightful difficulties.
This long journey had occupied six months only, and we read that
in former times twelve years were sometimes taken in trading
journeys.]

In Vol. VIII. of the Journal of Education we find a notice that
"Professor Dietz, of the University of Koenigsberg, who had spent five
years of his life in visiting the principal libraries of Germany, Italy,
Switzerland, Spain, France, and England, in search of manuscripts of
Greek, Roman, and Oriental writers on medicine, is now engaged in
publishing his 'Analecta Medica.'

"The work contains several interesting papers on the subject of physical
science among the Indians and Arabians, and communicates several
introductory notices and illustrations from native Eastern writers.
Dietz proves that the late Greek physicians were acquainted with the
medical works of the Hindus, and availed themselves of their
medicaments; but he more particularly shows that the Arabians were
familiar with them, and extolled the healing art, as practised by the
Indians, quite as much as that in use among the Greeks.

"It appears from Ibn Osaibe's testimony (from whose biographical work
Dietz has given a long abstract on the lives of Indian physicians), that
a variety of treatises on medical science were translated from the
Sanscrit into Persian and Arabic, particularly the more important
compilations of Charaka and Susruta, which are still held in estimation
in India; and that Manka and Saleh--the former of whom translated a
special treatise on poisons into Persian--even held appointments as
body-physicians at the Court of Harun-al-Raschid."

As the age of the medical works of Charaka and Susruta is incontestably
much more ancient than that of any other work on the