Ayurveda

Indian, and its two founding texts say so plainly. The Charaka Samhita covers internal medicine and the Sushruta Samhita covers surgery; between them they supply almost everything our articles cite, from the definition of constitution to the hundred paces after a meal. They are separate works with separate emphases — Sushruta is the one who puts a number on the constitutional types, seven of them — and neither has a Chinese source. Where the two traditions do touch, our articles say so and show the difference rather than blurring it.

Of thirty-six Ayurvedic claims we checked against the primary texts and the research, three were confirmed, twenty-three had partial support, four were refuted, and six had never been tested. That partial-support share is the highest of the seven traditions we cover, and its untested share is the lowest — but "partial" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It means a study points the same way as the text, usually a small one, not that the classical explanation was vindicated. The thirty-six follow our own topics rather than the tradition's priorities.

The tradition is explicit that its own remedies can harm, and says so in the founding text rather than in a modern disclaimer. Charaka introduces the examination of the patient's constitution precisely so a physician can match the strength of a remedy to the person, and warns that a strong medicine given to a weak one acts as an immediate destroyer of life. That is the classical purpose of constitutional typing: not self-discovery, but dosing. Anything beyond that — interactions with modern drugs, heavy metals in some preparations — is a question for the safety section of the individual remedy, not for the tradition as a whole.