#JivakaKomarabhacca

Jīvaka Komārabhacca · c. 6th–5th century BCE

In the books · 1 chapter

Who this is

Medicine — physician and surgeon; personal doctor to King Bimbisāra, to his son Ajātaśatru, to the Buddha, and to the entire Buddhist monastic order.

“A courtesan's baby thrown on a rubbish heap became the most famous physician of his age — and his hardest case was not a skull or a bowel but a king's conscience, which he treated with the only prescription that works: he took the patient to someone who could actually help.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 30

The big idea, in the book's words:

“The earliest Indian doctor we can actually watch working — examining, dosing, operating, charging fees, making house calls — and the man whose graduation exam was to find one plant with no medicinal use, and who passed by coming back empty-handed.”

— The Great Indians, Ch. 30