1

VISION OF A PHYSICIAN
HOW NOT TO CONTRACT

FLU & UPPER RESPIRATORY

TRACT INFECTION
DR. M. A. USMANI

Vision of a physician lies in that he prevents himself, his dependents and patients from
falling sick. His knowledge in prophylaxis, vis-à-vis his environment and socio-economic
situation, should be vast and unrivalled. He should save, with his foresight, himself and
all the concerned from falling sick. Prescribing medicines for a developed disease or
disorder is a small part (albeit a very essential and vital one) of his total role as a
physician (which means: ‘a provider of health with vision of Nature). He imparts
knowledge as to how to remain healthy and ward off diseases, and save himself, and all
the concerned, from the inclemency of elements and weather. A physician is first a
physician then a homeopath, an allopath, a vade or a hakeem. Being a physician is a
mindset, with an inborn proclivity thereto. The selection of the therapeutic field is
subservient and subsequent to it.

It is a common place observation that, during an invasive epidemic, many people escape
the disease, in spite of being equally exposed to the effluvia of the raging miasm. What
keeps them safe? Something in the individual himself, that does not match, or, rather,
stand contrary to the infective influence. You may call it temperament. We have seen that
when temperament is unmatching, a person can eat and sleep with a tubercular patient,
and never get the disease.

Similarly, in an epidemic of ‘flu, of any modern denomination, or of yore, many

members of a family completely escape, without any scathing influence, while others
suffer intensely. What keeps or lets them escape unhurt is the dissimilarity in their
constitution. Whatever you may call it, I name it as temperament. I know that many
eyebrows might have been raised on this, calling it an antediluvian idea of the dead past.

But TEMPERAMENT IS A FACT. Every person has his own temperament. Every disease
has its temperament, and every medicine has its peculiar temperament. And the whole
business of curative therapeutics depends on ‘philic’ and ‘phobic’ adjustment of
temperaments of diseases and medicines.

Elements of nature express and flow in the garb of temperament. There is hot weather,
cold weather, wet weather and dry weather. Expression and transition of weathers is
 2

always in compound humours, no single humour ever exists; i.e. a weather is not dry
only, it is either cold-dry or warm-dry. Similarly, it is either cold-wet or warm-wet.
Another natural fact is that transition is smooth by change of one factor at a time. That is,
transition is not from cold-dry to warm-wet (i.e. opposite of both factors: warm for cold
and wet for dry). Transition is from cold-dry to cold-wet, not to warm-wet, similarly
warm-wet to warm-dry weather.

Now we come to our topic, which is about: cold, coryza, flue, rhinitis (also pharyngitis,
laryngitis, and tonsillitis, etc.). Etymologically we find that cold and coryza has
something to do with cold; that is, caused by cold. So, logically we have to prevent it or
cure it by opposing the cold with the warmth. To translate this edict into practice we have
to go in some details. It is clear that to save oneself from cold, one has to keep oneself
warm. That brings us to the age-old theory of humours. The cold, coryza or flue is a cold-
wet disease. This will upset the people who have the same constitutional humour: the
Hydrogenoid of Grauvogl or the Phlegmatic of the Greeks. The allopathic treatment
consists in drying up the secretions by cold-dry regimen or dispensation. That will
certainly do the magic. That will arrest the flow; and it is in accordance with the humour
theory. We practically find that foods of cold-dry nature, such as citrus fruits and lemon
and orange juices help coryza. But this is counter to the drift of nature. We see in nature
that cold-dry weather resolves into cold-wet weather, and cold-wet resolves in warm-wet.
After a spell of intense dry-cold (that is, dry winter), rains set in, which change the
weather to wet winter. And the cold-wet slowly, imperceptibly, with the revolution of the
earth, transmutes itself into warm-wet (that is spring). Moderately warm and moderately
cold is the humour of the spring breeze, that coax the elements and the earth to bring
forth new plants with new leaves, buds and variegated flora, which fills the environ with
beauty, rejuvenation and sweet scents. [Our mystic poet, Ghalib, says: the garden with
nascent greenery, the sprouting buds and bewitching flowers is the personification of the
invisible spring breeze.] The spring resolves into more and more warmth and less and
less wet, ultimately we find summer (warm-dry weather) setting in. That is the cycle of
nature. Whosoever goes with nature, goes with the laws of health. So the foods for cold
and coryza, to be more effective, should be warm-wet. And these foods are not sour.
They consist of fresh dates, dry dates, fresh or dry figs, nuts of various kinds (such as
almond, walnut, cashew nut, pistachio, but not peanuts). The kitchen foods should
include onions, garlic, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and ginger tea and many other warm
herbal teas sweetened with honey. The best beverage, that is anti-phlegmatic, is
cinnamon tea with a table-spoon of honey. People taking these foods or recipes, will
fearlessly walk through the pandemic country-sides. Why? Because these people have so
changed their humour that is now fully anti-phlegmatic; or better say complementary to
phlegmatic or cold-wet.

Let me enlarge a bit on the difference of ‘anti’ and ‘complementary’ terms. ‘Anti’ food or
drug will wipe away the humour to which they are anti; but that will be a drastic action
and unnatural one, because nature moves through transition, not in opposition or
counter-action; and changes one part of the compound humour at a time. So, medically
speaking, the ‘anti’ prescription leads to suppression of the disease, not to the resolution
of the disease. And that is not a wise step therapeutically.
 3

This suppressive action can be taken as permissible if the flue has taken place because of
late or recent indulgence, of an individual, in phlegmatic foods and activities, but the
basic dyscrasia of the individual is not hydrogenoid. Such a person will feel at once
relieved from all sufferings by these ‘anti’ foods and drinks. But the ‘flu of a person who
is basically and temperamentally phlegmatic and hydrogenoid, the case would not be that
simple. He will suffer drastically by this cold-dry prescription of foods. In such
constitutions the invading similar acute miasm does not remain superficial, but gets at
once wedded with the deeper undercurrents. Here suppressive measures make him more
sick and moribund. He will say ‘I’m better in coryza, but not well myself’.

When an acute disease, similar to the predominant humour of the individual, attacks him,
it acts as a homeopathic (but as a bio-nosodic, or morbific) agent which stirs up all the
forces of the constitution. This is an occasion when the homeopathic medicine will act as
a double-edged sword: fighting the new invading disease, and rectifying the thus
activated underlying miasm, in one go. This will bring more order to the constitution.
Here, we require, as nutrition, those foods that will help the constitution to unburden
itself, by throwing out all the foul effluvia, and, at the same time, supplying the required
vigour to the constitution of the individual. In the concrete situation of our topic, the
disease of cold-wet humour (coryza, for example) attacking the cold-wet constitution,
theoretically and legitimately can be countered by prescribing cold-dry foods, as we have
mentioned above, by giving acid foods, such as, for example, citrus fruits and juices. But
in this case this will wreak havoc, because all the deep recesses of the miasmatic
proliferation have already been stirred up, by the invading similar disease. By giving
cold-dry foods we can arrest the fluent discharge of coryza only, but not the commotion
that have been given to the underlying effluvia of old and stinking catarrh. This catarrh
will come to an abrupt halt; leaving the patient with severe pain in frontal sinuses and
maddening catarrhal headache. To help discharge these foul effluvia we require strong
warm-wet foods, and other agents, (as have been detailed above) that would keep the
discharge flowing, and, at the same time, provide the required warmth of the warm foods
to help in maximum exudation and clean-up, without, thereby, feeling any exhaustion and
weakness.

A physician should be well conversant with the scientific knowledge of temperament and
constitutions, and the rules of diet and food prescription, according to these differences of
temperament and character of the disease and the individual. Owing to this lack of
knowledge one finds medical practitioners committing blatant mistakes. For this reason
their whole activity remains counter productive. One finds that what they are doing, so to
speak, with their right hand (by choosing the right remedy), they are undoing the same
with their left hand (by advising ill-thought of food regimen). So,

Physician, be thy own critic, and leave no stone unturned in polishing thyself !