Food & Diet in Health & Disease from Homoeopathic Standpoint


The Science of Therapeutics and Hygiene and Medicine may have their independent spheres with their distinctive laws or each of them might be a part of a still broader generalisation with a synthetic law covering all of them. It is only our Indian Ayurvedic System of Medicine that has succeeded in laying down such a synthetic and integral law which guides its Medicine, Therapeutic and Hygienic practices. With this preamble we will confine ourselves to the problem of diet and regimen as discussed by Hahnemann and his followers like Boenninghausen etc.


Life has been described as “essentially a form of the one Cosmic Energy, a dynamic movement or current of it positive or negative, a constant act or play of the force which builds up forms, energies them by a continued stream of stimulation and maintains them by an unceasing process of disintegration and renewal of their substance.” The most distinctive and fundamental activity of a living organism is its power of assimilation and metabolism i.e., it can take in foreign materials and turn them into its own flesh and blood to preserve and maintain its nutrition and growth.

For this transformative and assimilative function a living body requires a constant supply of materials in the form of food and drink. Hahnemann writes in his epoch making essay “the Medicine of Experience”; The pure aliments of food and drink, taken until hunger and thirst abate, support our strength, by replacing the parts lost in the vital processes, without disturbing the functions of our organs or impairing the health.” The Science of Dietary consists in the discovery of general principles that guide us to select and determine specific articles of food and drink, both qualitatively and quantitatively, in conditions of health and diseases.

It legitimately forms a branch of the wider Science of Hygiene. It is to be borne in mind that Homoeopathy primarily consists in the discovery and application of a Therapeutic Law of Cure in so far as disease conditions are sought to be treated by medicinal drugs. But as according to Hahnemann a complete and ideal physician is “likewise a preserver of health” a practising physician must be one and the same time a therapeutist as well as a Hygienist, employing often therefore, for the same case both specific remedies and various auxiliaries in the form of diet and regimen.

It is also to be borne in mind that unlike the discovery of a Therapeutic Law Hahnemann did not discover any general law concerning Hygiene. He applied his sharp common sense and extremely logical and scientific mind in throwing light on the problems of diet and regimen for persons suffering from acute and chronic diseases. The so – called modern scientific medicine has no science of Therapeutics whatever and as usual with it the Science of Hygiene is also nothing but applied physiology which in its turn is nothing but applied physics and chemistry.

The Science of Therapeutics and Hygiene and Medicine may have their independent spheres with their distinctive laws or each of them might be a part of a still broader generalisation with a synthetic law covering all of them. It is only our Indian Ayurvedic System of Medicine that has succeeded in laying down such a synthetic and integral law which guides its Medicine, Therapeutic and Hygienic practices. With this preamble we will confine ourselves to the problem of diet and regimen as discussed by Hahnemann and his followers like Boenninghausen etc.

Hahnemann distinguishes articles of food from medicines in this way: food is requisite for healthy body and medicines are useful in disease conditions. An ideal food is what contains nutritious, but no irritating medicinal part; an ideal drink is what is either merely diluent or diluent and nutritious at the same time but which contains no medicinal and irritating component parts, such as pure spring water and milk. A medicine may be defined, in general as any substance which is capable of changing or definitely modifying the mode in which any organ or system of the body performs its functions or of changing or modifying the tissues of the body.

In between these two extremes of an article being an ideal food or an ideal medicine there are a multitude of food articles which have medicinal properties and some medicinal objects which have definite food value. We leave out of consideration those articles which serve neither as foods or medicines. There is one more point to note.

We, human beings, at the present stage of our civilization have developed the culinary art to such an extent that the use of many articles e.g. spices etc., have become indispensable in the process of cooking and which serve to add to our taste; and we have become addicted to certain other articles, e.g. tea, coffee, tobacco, snuff, opium, wine etc. which have almost become a part and parcel of our daily routine of diet and regimen. Unfortunately these food accessories and articles of addiction, far from having any food value, do definitely possess medicinal properties viz. power of deranging the healthy state of the living body.

They merely serve to add to taste or provide a temporary feeling of exaltation or well being but in the long run their prolonged use are attended with development of drug – diseases which are certainly prejudicial to health and long life. We can easily abstain from those articles which are purely of medicinal value but difficulty arises when certain items of food, food – accessories or articles of addiction are found to possess medicinal properties but none – the – less indispensable factors of our daily diet and regimen.

The whole problem of right dietetics revolves round the degree of latitude we can allow for indulgence in these articles so that health may not be further impaired in conditions of ill – health. The problem is further complicated by Hahnemanns discovery of the fact that some articles of food or food – accessories which are solely nutritive or merely auxiliary for taste value when taken in moderate quantities and in usual way (i.e. in crude form) are found to exhibit specific medicinal properties when they are administered to healthy being in homoeopathic potencies.

Again some of these articles of diet may exhibit dynamic properties even when they are taken in crude state and hence they might interfere with dynamic actions of drugs selected homoeopathically and administered to a sick individual. Next, some of the aforesaid articles may have antidotal value in relation to some homoeopathic drugs with which a patient happens to be treated.

Lastly, the concurrent use of things of addiction along with homoeopathic medicinal treatment that a patient may undergo for the time being, raises another knotty problem sometimes too difficult to come to a correct decision. All these controversial factors require clarification under discussion relating to diet and regimen from the Homoeopathic point of view. Let us see how Hahnemann and his followers have dealt with these problems.

Hahnemann lays down a general rule to the effect that “in proportion as the substances we call medicines can make the healthy body sick, so are they calculated to remove the abnormal states dangerous to life, which go by the name of diseases. The sole end of medicines consequently is to change the abnormal, the morbid state, that is, to transform it into health. Used by themselves, and when no transform it into health.

Used by themselves, and when no disease is present, they are absolutely hurtful things for health and normal life. Their frequent use as articles of diet deranged the harmonious concordance of our organs, undermines health and shortens life. A wholesome medicine for a healthy individual is contradiction of terms”. So frequent use of medicinal substances of great power as articles of diet is most objectionable.

Of all the food – accessories Hahnemann regards kitchen salt, sugar and vinegar as harmless and suitable for the human body if they are used in moderate quantities. All other accessories, which go by the name of spices etc. and all spirituous and fermented liquors, have some medicinal values – so the more frequently and excessively they are used, the more harmful they prove to the healthy condition of the living body. In modern times various medicinal drinks and condiments have been added to our diet: “Snuffing and smoking tobacco, chewing tobacco and hemp leaves, eating opium, drinking brandy, several kinds of stimulating and medical bears, tea and coffee etc.

With regard to articles of addiction it is noted that habit gradually extinguishes the injurious impressions they at first made upon us: “they may become even agreeable to us, that is to say, the disagreeable sensations their ingestion at first produced do not strike us so much as we go on using them, and this apparently agreeable effects upon our organs of sensation gradually become necessary to us. That is why a man once addicted to a particular thing, cannot give it up even when he is worse for it.

That these drugs or other articles of addiction do have medicinal properties is evident from the fact that no one ever smoked tobacco, chewed tobacco or drank wine for the first time in his life without disgust or alteration in the sensations and functions of his organism “a hint given by nature to shun the first occasion for transgressing the laws of health and not to trample so frivolously under our feet the warning instinct implanted in us for the preservation of our life.”

But can we prescribe a menu of diet for an individual, whether in health or sickness so that every item of it would be free from medicinal properties? It is practically impossible. What is the way out? Hahnemann points out that though all medicines have the power of making the healthy ill they differ in degrees though not in kind. The articles having strong medicinal properties manifest their action even when given in small doses to healthy and even strong individuals. Those that have weaker action needs administration in large and repeated doses for producing their effects.

N C Das
N C Das
Calcutta