‘1st c-sec, cataract eye opwere carried out in India’

Varanasi: The IKS Center of IIT (BHU) conducted a two-day national conference on Indian Knowledge Systems from February 28 to March 1. The principal investigator of the IKS Center, V Ramanathan summarised the activities of the center and also gave a brief outline of the conference.
Delivering the plenary address at the inaugural function, the vice-chancellor of the Sampurnananda Sanskrit University, Prof Hareram Tripathi stressed on the importance of collaboration of the two IKS centers. He outlined potential fields of collaboration and drew attention to the dire need of such cross-discipline dialogues. In his presidential address, the dean of Academic Affairs, IIT(BHU), Prof. Shyam Bihari Dwivedi reviewed the activities of the IKS Center at IIT(BHU).
The conference had four technical sessions aligning with the four focus areas -Nyaaya, Chemistry, Maths and Astronomy and Holistic Wellness. The first technical session began with a keynote address by Prof K Ramasubramanian of IITB, who is a pioneer in the field of Indian Mathematics and astronomy.
The last technical session was devoted to holistic wellness. Delivering the keynote address, Padma Shri Prof Manoranjan Sahu talked about the surgery legacy of the country and particularly Varanasi. He drew attention to the fact that the first ever cesarian operation, removal of cataract from the eye and removal of renal calculi were carried out in India. Not only that, he highlighted how very niche surgical techniques like rhinoplasty and maggot therapy for wound healing were mastered in India some 2,500 years ago and the western medicine is realizing these only in the last couple of decades.
“Although several of these surgical procedures were described and known to us even today, the fact that how those surgeons anaesthetized their patients is something still a mystery,” he said.