Reviving Humoral Medicine
with Dr. Hani El Batal
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A Fundamental Principle in Medicine
One of the established principles among physicians is that the first step in treatment is to correct the patient’s diet. If dietary changes alone are sufficient to restore health, then that is the desired outcome.
If dietary modification is not enough, the physician proceeds to prescribe simple (single-ingredient) medicines. If these do not achieve recovery, treatment advances to compound (multi-ingredient) medicines.
This approach highlights the importance of diet, as it is always the physician’s first line of treatment. When a person begins by improving their diet, they often experience significant benefits, and many illnesses may resolve as a result.
Food is a substance that is capable of becoming part of the human body. In its true sense, food is what enters the body, replaces what has been lost, adheres to it, and is transformed into the substance of one of the body’s organs. It thus becomes an integral part of the body, restoring what has been broken down through natural processes.
The blood produced from food may be thick, thin, or moderate. Accordingly, foods are classified as thick foods, light (thin) foods, or moderate foods.
Each of these three categories may provide abundant, moderate, or limited nourishment, resulting in nine classifications of foods.
Furthermore, each of these nine categories may produce either wholesome humors (ḥasan al-kaymūs, good chyme) or unwholesome humors (radīʾ al-kaymūs, poor chyme), bringing the total to eighteen classifications of foods.
Definition of Food
Absolute food is food that is not characterized by any of the four primary qualities. In other words, it does not possess an excess of heat, cold, moisture, or dryness. Otherwise, it would be classified as either a medicinal food or a nutritive medicine, rather than absolute food.
The difference between a medicinal food and a nutritive medicine is that a medicinal food is one in which its nourishing properties predominate over its medicinal effects, whereas a nutritive medicine is one in which its medicinal effects predominate over its nourishing properties.
Physicians have long observed that many illnesses can be cured through diet alone, whereas medicine alone may not be sufficient.
In other words, when a person eats in a manner appropriate to their temperament, they may recover from illness without the need for medication. Simply understanding what to eat and what to drink can be enough to restore health.
On the other hand, if a person relies solely on medicine while neglecting proper nutrition, recovery may not be achieved.
Definition of Absolute Food