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In the latro-Chemical period (1300–1550 A.D.) the same medical principles of preparing medicine from plants-herbs and simples, minerals and metals were followed by the jainācāryas in the use of medicine with some exception in the case of honey, fat, etc.
The prominent feature of their medical science of this period lay in the search after the elixir vitae. Numerous preparations of mercury, iron, copper, gold, silver and minerals are found to be helpful accessories in medicine. At first they came to be used cautiously and tentatively with the medical recipes which were drawn chiefly from the plant kingdom, but they began soon to assert a supremacy of their own to supplant old Ayurvedic treatment by herbs and simples. One of the Characteristic features of this period is that opium is recognized as the official drug in the Jaina materia medica as it is found in the Hindu materia medica. A special stress has been put on the therapeutic efficiency of mineral preparations. Both opium? and mineral acids are prescribed for many diseases as remedies. In addition to opium some foreign drugs were incorporated in the pharmacology of the Jaina medical science, e.g. Chobchini (China smilax); rasakarpur (Calomel, ete.) to treat the case of syphilis (Phirangiroga), a forign disease.
The Jainācāryas have dealt with the preparation of medicinal tinctures and prescribed mercury treated with some minerals and plants as the remedy for many kinds of disease including veneral disease (Phirangiroga).4
The Virtues of mercury are commended by the Jainācāryas that men are freed from multitude of diseases by partaking of medicine prepared with mercury. .
It is a well-known historical fact that the portuguese had fairly established at Goa and some parts of India by the beginning of the sixteenth century A. D.6
“As a result of intercourse of India with them that dreadful scourge the Veneral disease Syphilis made its appearance"? in India. 1. See Suvarņa-Raupya-Siddhi śāstra, Ch. III. 30–31; VI. 17. 2. Ibid., Ch. X. 26. etc. 3. See Vaidyaka Samgraha, Phinangivatasamadhi etc. 4. See Vaidyakasamgraha of an unknown author (18th cen. A.D.) who
seems to be a Jaina. 5. SRSS., Ch. IX. 1. 2. 6. Hindu Chemistry, Dr. p. C. Ray, p. 162. 7. Ibid.,
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