For more than twenty years past I
have been paying special attention to the question of Health. While in England,
I had to make my own arrangements for food and drink, and I can say, therefore,
that my experience is quite reliable. I have arrived at certain definite
conclusions from that experience, and I now set them down for the benefit of my
readers.
As the familiar saying goes,
‘Prevention is better than cure.’ It is far easier and safer to prevent illness
by the observance of the laws of health than to set about curing the illness
which has been brought on by our own ignorance and carelessness. Hence it is
the duty of all thoughtful men to understand aright the laws of health, and the
object of the following pages is to give an account of these laws. We shall
also consider the best methods of cure for some of the most common diseases.
As Milton says, the mind can make
a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell. So heaven is not somewhere above the
clouds, and hell somewhere underneath the earth! We have this same idea
expressed in the Sanskrit saying, Mana êva Manushayanâm Kâranam Bandha
Mokshayoh—man’s captivity or freedom is dependant on the state of his mind.
From this it follows that whether a man is healthy or unhealthy depends on
himself. Illness is the result not only of our actions but also of our
thoughts. As has been said by a famous doctor, more people die for fear of
diseases like small-pox, cholera and plague than out of those diseases
themselves.
Ignorance is one of the
root-causes of disease. Very often we get bewildered at the most ordinary
diseases out of sheer ignorance, and in our anxiety to get better, we simply
make matters worse. Our ignorance of the most elementary laws of health leads
us to adopt wrong remedies or drives us into the hands of the veriest quacks.
How strange (and yet how true) it is that we know much less about things near
at hand than things at a distance. We know hardly anything of our own village,
but we can give by rote the names of the rivers and mountains of England! We
take so much trouble to learn the names of the stars in the sky, while we
hardly think it worth while to know the things that are in our own homes! We
never care a jot for the splendid pageantry of Nature before our very eyes,
while we are so anxious to witness the puerile mummeries of the theatre! And in
the same way, we are not ashamed to be ignorant of the structure of our body,
of the way in which the bones and muscles, grow, how the blood circulates and
is rendered impure, how we are affected by evil thoughts and passions, how our
mind travels over illimitable spaces and times while the body is at rest, and
so on. There is nothing so closely connected with us as our body, but there is
also nothing perhaps of which our ignorance is so profound, or our indifference
so complete.
It is the duty of every one of us
to get over this indifference. Everyone should regard it as his bounden duty to
know something of the fundamental facts concerning his body. This kind of
instruction should indeed be made compulsory in our schools. At present, we
know not how to deal with the most ordinary scalds and wounds; we are helpless
if a thorn runs into our foot; we are beside ourselves with fright and dismay
if we are bitten by an ordinary snake! Indeed, if we consider the depth of our
ignorance in such matters, we shall have to hang down our heads in shame. To
assert that the average man cannot be expected to know these things is simply
absurd. The following pages are intended for such as are willing to learn.
I do not pretend that the facts
mentioned by me have not been said before. But my readers will find here in a
nutshell the substance of several books on the subject. I have arrived at my
conclusions after studying these books, and after a series of careful
experiments. Moreover, those who are new to this subject will also be saved the
risk of being confounded by the conflicting views held by writers of such
books. One writer says for instance, that hot water is to be used under certain
circumstances, while another writer says that, exactly under the same
circumstances, cold water is to be used. Conflicting views of this kind have
been carefully considered by me, so that my readers may rest assured of the
reliability of my own views.
We have got into the habit of
calling in a doctor for the most trivial diseases. Where there is no regular
doctor available, we take the advice of mere quacks. We labour under the fatal
delusion that no disease can be cured without medicine. This has been
responsible for more mischief to mankind than any other evil. It is of course,
necessary that our diseases should be cured, but they cannot be cured by
medicines. Not only are medicines merely useless, but at times even positively
harmful. For a diseased man to take drugs and medicines would be as foolish as
to try to cover up the filth that has accumulated in the inside of the house.
The more we cover up the filth, the more rapidly does putrefaction go on. The
same is the case with the human body. Illness or disease is only Nature’s
warning that filth has accumulated in some portion or other of the body; and it
would surely be the part of wisdom to allow Nature to remove the filth, instead
of covering it up by the help of medicines. Those who take medicines are really
rendering the task of Nature doubly difficult. It is, on the other hand, quite
easy for us to help Nature in her task by remembering certain elementary
principles,—by fasting, for instance, so that the filth may not accumulate all
the more, and by vigorous exercise in the open air, so that some of the filth
may escape in the form of perspiration. And the one thing that is supremely
necessary is to keep our minds strictly under control.
We find from experience that,
when once a bottle of medicine gets itself introduced into a home, it never
thinks of going out, but only goes on drawing other bottles in its train. We
come across numberless human beings who are afflicted by some disease or other
all through their lives in spite of their pathetic devotion to medicines. They
are to-day under the treatment of this doctor, to-morrow of that. They spend
all their life in a futile search after a doctor who will cure them for good.
As the late Justice Stephen (who was for some time in India) said, it is really
astonishing that drugs of which so little is known should be applied by doctors
to bodies of which they know still less! Some of the greatest doctors of the
West themselves have now come to hold this view. Sir Astley Cooper, for
instance, admits that the ‘science’ of medicine is mostly mere guess-work; Dr.
Baker and Dr. Frank hold that more people die of medicines than of diseases;
and Dr. Masongood even goes to the extent of saying that more men have fallen
victims to medicine than to war, famine and pestilence combined!
It is also a matter of experience
that diseases increase in proportion to the increase in the number of doctors
in a place. The demand for drugs has become so widespread that even the meanest
papers are sure of getting advertisements of quack medicines, if of nothing
else. In a recent book on the Patent Medicines we are told that the Fruit-salts
and syrups, for which we pay from Rs. 2 to Rs. 5, cost to their manufacturers
only from a quarter of an anna to one anna! No wonder, then, that their compositions
should be so scrupulously kept a secret.
We will, therefore, assure our
readers that there is absolutely no necessity for them to seek the aid of
doctors. To those, however, who may not be willing to boycott doctors and
medicines altogether, we will say, “As far as possible, possess your souls in
patience, and do not trouble the doctors. In case you are forced at length to
call in the aid of a doctor, be sure to get a good man; then, follow his
directions strictly, and do not call in another doctor, unless by his own
advice. But remember, above all, that the curing of your disease does not rest
ultimately in the hands of any doctor.”
Ordinarily that man is considered
healthy who eats well and moves about, and does not resort to a doctor. But a
little thought will convince us that this idea is wrong. There are many cases
of men being diseased, in spite of their eating well and freely moving about.
They are under the delusion that they are healthy, simply because they are too
indifferent to think about the matter.
In fact, perfectly healthy men
hardly exist anywhere over this wide world.
As has been well said, only that
man can be said to be really healthy, who has a sound mind in a sound body. The
relation between the body and the mind is so intimate that, if either of them
got out of order, the whole system would suffer. Let us take the analogy of the
rose-flower. Its colour stands to its fragrance in the same way as the body to
the mind or the soul. No one regards an artificial paper-flower as a sufficient
substitute for the natural flower, for the obvious reason that the fragrance,
which forms the essence of the flower, cannot be reproduced. So too, we
instinctively honour the man of a pure mind and a noble character in preference
to the man who is merely physically strong. Of course, the body and the soul
are both essential, but the latter is far more important than the former. No
man whose character is not pure can be said to be really healthy. The body which
contains a diseased mind can never be anything but diseased. Hence it follows
that a pure character is the foundation of health in the real sense of the
term; and we may say that all evil thoughts and evil passions are but different
forms of disease.
Thus considered, we may conclude
that that man alone is perfectly healthy whose body is well formed, whose teeth
as well as eyes and ears are in good condition, whose nose is free from dirty
matter, whose skin exudes perspiration freely and without any bad smell, whose
mouth is also free from bad smells, whose hands and legs perform their duty
properly, who is neither too fat nor too thin, and whose mind and senses are
constantly under his control. As has already been said, it is very hard to gain
such health, but it is harder still to retain it, when once it has been
acquired. The chief reason why we are not truly healthy is that our parents
were not. An eminent writer has said that, if the parents are in perfectly good
condition their children would certainly be superior to them in all respects. A
perfectly healthy man has no reason to fear death; our terrible fear of death
shows that we are far from being so healthy. It is, however, the clear duty of
all of us to strive for perfect health. We will, therefore, proceed to consider
in the following pages how such health can be attained, and how, when once
attained, it can also be retained for ever.
By M. K. Gandhi
