04-22-2007, 11:09 AM
I had mentioned in the old thread my own amazement as I realised that modern day "scientific" practices for asepsis, "no touch techniques", scrub technique and operating theater discipline were all concepts that existed in the Hindu household of my childhood.
Even the well known concept of "jootha" ("yenjilu" or saliva/spit in Kannada) has a clear scientific basis. You DO NOT take a ladle out of a pot in which you are cooking food for a group.put that ladle to you lips and put it back in the common pot because you are contaminating the common pot with bacteria from your mouth.
You DO NOT dip a spoon into yogurt and then into another cooked food item because the bacterial inoculate in yogurt can make the other food go bad soon.
If you are in a hospital sterile environment and you have to pick up a sterile instrument and hand it to a doctor wearing sterile gloves, you do not use your unsterile hands to do that. You use an instrument in which you are allowed to hold one end (which is unsterile) but the other end is sterile and you pick up the sterile object with the sterile end. The idea that one area can be clean and another area less clean has an exact analogy in washing one's backside with the left hand alone,(followed by a good wash of hands) and using the right hand alone to handle foodstuff.
These are examples of exact concurrence between Hindu practice and science. The Hindu practice could well have been serendipity, for there is no record of research and double blind studies.
Even the well known concept of "jootha" ("yenjilu" or saliva/spit in Kannada) has a clear scientific basis. You DO NOT take a ladle out of a pot in which you are cooking food for a group.put that ladle to you lips and put it back in the common pot because you are contaminating the common pot with bacteria from your mouth.
You DO NOT dip a spoon into yogurt and then into another cooked food item because the bacterial inoculate in yogurt can make the other food go bad soon.
If you are in a hospital sterile environment and you have to pick up a sterile instrument and hand it to a doctor wearing sterile gloves, you do not use your unsterile hands to do that. You use an instrument in which you are allowed to hold one end (which is unsterile) but the other end is sterile and you pick up the sterile object with the sterile end. The idea that one area can be clean and another area less clean has an exact analogy in washing one's backside with the left hand alone,(followed by a good wash of hands) and using the right hand alone to handle foodstuff.
These are examples of exact concurrence between Hindu practice and science. The Hindu practice could well have been serendipity, for there is no record of research and double blind studies.