Medicine, Body and Public Health

Jayanta Bhattacharya

Gandhian thoughts onpolitics have been widely discussed, but Gandhi’s perception of modern medicine, human body, and health (especially public health) also remain quite fascinating till date.

In his An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi informs his readers–”The time of which I am now speaking is my sixteenth year. My father, as we have seen, was bed-ridden, suffering from a fistula. My mother, an old servant of the house, and I were his principal attendants. I had the duties of a nurse ... Every night I massaged his legs and retired only when he asked me to do so or after he had fallen asleep. I loved to do this service.”

That he was a good nurse is evident from the fact that his first child was home-delivered by himself. He learned nursing while he was attached with the South African Army during the Boer War–”I found time to serve in the small hospital ... It consisted in ascertaining the patients’ complaints, laying the facts before the doctor and dispensing the prescriptions. It brought me in close touch with suffering Indians, most of them indentured Tamil, Telugu or North India men. The experience stood me in good stead ... I offered my services for nursing the sick and wounded soldiers ... I had two sons born in South Africa, and my service in the hospital was useful in solving the question of their upbringing. (Collected Works, henceforth CW)

To remember, during the Boer War (1899–1902), Mahatma Gandhi organised and led the Indian Ambulance Corps, a non-military volunteer group of about 1,100 men, to support the British. Gandhi believed that by aiding the British in this conflict, he could demonstrate the loyalty of Indians and thus earn them better treatment and civil rights within the British Empire, particularly in South Africa.

In his later writings, this notion of “home remedy” took up a good amount of attention. When all efforts of ayurvedic, hakims and folk treatment failed, modern surgery was suggested for his father. But he declined. Gandhi later thought–”if the physician had allowed the operation, the wound would have been easily healed ... But God had willed otherwise.” (Ibid)

These trails of incidents had a lasting impression on framing his thoughts around body, health and medicine. The role of cleanliness on one hand, and excellence of modern surgery in comparison to traditional practices on the other, deeply influenced him.

“Such cleanliness is quite essential no doubt, but Western medical science had taught us that all the functions, including a bath, can be done in bed with the strictest regard to cleanliness, and without the slightest discomfort to the patient, the bed always remaining spotlessly clean. I should regard such cleanliness as quite consistent with Vaishnavism.”(Ibid).

Interestingly, the heading of this chapter is “My Father’s Death and My Double Shame”. Why such a curious title? Let us know from Gandhi himself. “This was also the time when my wife was expecting a baby, circumstance which, as I can see today, meant a double shame for me. For one thing, I did not restrain myself, as I should have done, whilst I was yet a student. And secondly, this carnal lust got the better of what I regarded as my duty to my parents, Shravana having been my ideal since childhood. Every night whilst my hands were busy massaging my father’s legs, my mind was hovering about the bed-room, and that too at a time when religion, medical science and commonsense alike forbade sexual intercourse.” The incident of “double shame” has significantly contributed to his notion of brahmacharya and husband-wife relationship.

Abstinence, self-piety, and ahimsa are some of the most important contributors to his notion around medicine and public health. Since 1888 when he reached London to become a barrister, a major part of his thought was preoccupied with some of his own novel ideas about the body and vegetarian food.

He derived these ideas from Ruskin’s idealism (Unto the Last), inspired in part by Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism and Robert Owen’s utopianism, “overwhelmed” by Tolstoy’s The Kingdom is Within You. (For detailed study see, Stanley Wolpert, Gandhi’s Passion: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi).

Later in his life, he was influenced by two books on nature cure–Louis Kuhne’sThe New Science of Healing or the Doctrine of Oneness of All Diseases and Neo-Naturopathy: The New Science of Healing or the Doctrine of Unity of Diseases, and, also, from Adolf Just’sReturn to Nature! Paradise Regained.

Following these books, Gandhi insisted on (1) hydrotherapy or water-cure, (2) phytotherapy (treatment by plants), (3) mud poultice (treatment by soil and mud), (4) self-regulation, and (5) maintaining balance in diet, lifestyle and existence.

Gandhi shaped his view of public health based on the anti-modern medicine position and relied considerably on “home remedies” and “self-restraint” of an individual.

In his much talked about book Hind Swaraj, he says “I was at one time a great lover of the medical profession. It was my intention to become a doctor for the sake of the country. I now understand why the medicine men (the vaidyas) among us have not occupied a very honourable status. The English have certainly and effectively used the medical profession for holding us. English physicians are known to have used the profession with several Asiatic potentates for political gain.”

Further, “Doctors have almost unhinged us. Sometimes I think that quacks are better than highly qualified doctors. Let us consider: the business of a doctor is to take care of the body, or, properly speaking, not even that ... How do these diseases arise? Surely by our negligence or indulgence. I over-eat, I have indigestion, I go to a doctor, he gives me medicine, I am cured, I over-eat again, and I take his pills again. Had I not taken the pills in the first instance, I would have suffered the punishment deserved by me, and I would not have over-eaten again. The doctor intervened and helped me to indulge myself. My body thereby certainly felt more at ease, but my mind became weakened. A continuance of a course of medicine must, therefore, result in loss of control over the mind … European doctors are the worst of all. For the sake of a mistaken care of the human body, they kill annually thousands of animals. They practise vivisection. No religion sanctions this. All say that it is not necessary to take so many lives for the sake of our bodies.”

One more interesting aspect is the difference between Gandhi’s idea of the origin of smallpox and that of modern medicine. Smallpox was a lethal disease until the 1960s. To kill the smallpox virus (which was later discovered) Jennerian vaccination was introduced in 1796 and practised throughout the world since the beginning of the 19th century. On the contrary, popular perception about the disease was confined to one’s fault, sin or misconduct which would lead to the disease.

Gandhi seems to represent popular, anti-medicine voice regarding this disease. “We are all afraid of the small-pox, and have very crude notions about it … In fact it is caused, just like other diseases, by the blood getting impure owing to some disorder of the bowels; and the poison that accumulates in the system is expelled in the form of small-pox. If this view is correct, then there is absolutely no need to be afraid of small-pox. If it were really a contagious disease, everyone should catch it by merely touching the patient; but this is not always the case. Hence, there is really no harm in touching the patient, provided we take some essential precautions in doing so.” (A Guide to Health)

It is incredible that the most-revered national leader and a trained barrister can further say–”Vaccination seems to be a savage custom. It is one of the poisonous superstitions of our times the equal of which is not to be found among so-called primitive societies … Vaccination is a filthy remedy … I personally feel that in taking this vaccine we are guilty of sacrilege.” (CW)

Here the question of divine causation of any disease supervenes over disease-causation out of anatomical, physiological or biochemical changes. To put it summarily, he accused doctors–”it is only the self-interest of doctors that stands in the way of the abolition of this inhuman practice, for the fear of losing the large incomes that they at present derive from this source blinds them to the countless evils which it brings.” (A Guide to Health)

Gandhi’s vehement opposition to modern medicine is based on–(1) vivisection or dissection, (2) more dependence on medicine leading to iatrogenic diseases, (3) the use of advertisements in medicine, especially patent medicine, and (4) the tidal increase of hospitals. He categorically stated–”I believe that a multiplicity of hospitals is no test of civilization. It is rather a symptom of decay, even as the multiplicity of pinjrapoles.” (CW)

Alternatively, he stressed on sanitation and hygiene–”The science of sanitation is infinitely more ennobling though more difficult of execution, than the science of healing... The present science of medicine is divorced from religion … A clean spirit must build a clean body… Vivisection, in my opinion, is the blackest of all blackest crimes that man is at present committing against God and his fair creation.” (Ibid)

Rudolph Virchow, the German pathologist and harbinger of social medicine, once commented: “Medicine is a social science, and politics nothing but medicine at a larger scale.” Virchow linked medicine with politics and political programs. It is very true for Gandhi too. His political and personal belief guided and shaped his notion about medicine and (public) health. His notion about nature cure and personal hygiene and religious adherence leads to a seamless state where modern public health (contrasted with the historic Alma-Ata Declaration, 1978) can never be achieved–whatever pious wishes it may contain or he may have.

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Vol 58, No. 19, Nov 2 - 8, 2025