Sushruta

Sushruta (c. 6th century BCE) practiced and taught surgery in the holy city of Kashi (Varanasi) on the banks of the Ganges. His seminal Sanskrit treatise, the Sushruta Samhita, forms one of the foundational pillars of Ayurveda, elevating surgery (*Shalya-tantra*) as the supreme branch of healing.

He pioneered pedicled forehead flap rhinoplasty to reconstruct amputated noses—a technique adopted by Western surgery twenty-three centuries later in 18th-century Britain. Sushruta documented cataract extractions, Caesarean deliveries, bladder stone removals, wound suturing using giant ant mandibles, and cataloged 121 precision surgical instruments.