CONCEPT
OF CANCER IN AYURVEDA
Dr. K. Prabhakaram
Professor & Head of the Dept. of Govt. Ayurvedic College,
Hyderabad, India.
Concepts
will be more but law is one. Regarding cancer the word itself
is self-explanatory. Cancer or crab is the creature which dies
after giving birth to thousands of small crabs. In the same
fashion in case of disease cancer also. The cell will die prematurely
and producing immature cells.
There
is no equivalent word to cancer in Ayurveda, but based on symptoms,
signs and prognosis we can correlate Arbuda, Valmeeka, Apachi,
Gandamala, Giloye like diseases. They have been mentioned as
kshudra rogas (particularly valmeeka which means Ant Hill} which
cannot be controlled with medicines, which itself get cured
on their own accord without medicines and there is no specific
etiology have been mentioned till date. So management of valmeeka
is matter of suspense.
Regarding
the classification of Arbudas vast material is available from
texts. Arbuda means one-lack soldiers in the body. It means
increased leukocyte count i.e. leukemia the Arbuda may be Benign
or malignant. It is observed that vata people are more prone
to get Bone Cancer, Pitta people blood Cancer and Kapha people
muscle and fatty tissue cancer (Mehta , N.J-1976)
