On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art

As the age of the medical works of Charaka and Susruta is incontestably much more ancient than that of any other work on the subject (except the Ayur Veda)--as we shall see when we come to consider the science of the Hindoos--this in itself would be sufficient to show that the Arabians were certainly not the originators of either medical or chemical science.

We should not forget that it is only to their own works and their translations, chiefly by the Greeks, we owe our knowledge of the state of Arabian science, and that it is only in rare cases that we have given a list of works consulted, so that we can gather the sources from which their knowledge was derived. It would scarcely be imagined, from reading the works of Roger Bacon, or of Newton, that they had derived some