Passage from HIND SWARAJ - by M K Gandhi

[Guest guest]

THE CONDITION OF INDIA (CONTINUED): DOCTORS

 

Reader: I now understand the lawyers, the good they may have done is

accidental. I feet that Profession is certainly hateful. You,

however, drag in the doctors also, how is that?

Editor: The views I submit to you are those I have adopted. They

are not original. Western writers have used stronger terms regarding

both lawyers and doctors. One writer has linked the whole modern

system to the Upas tree. Its branches are represented by parasitical

professions, including those, of law and medicine, and over the trunk

has been raised the axe of true religion. Immorality is the root of

the tree. So you will see that the views do not come right out of my

mind but represent the combined experiences of many. 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 no longer bold that

opinion. I now understand why the medicine men (the vaids) among us

have not occupied a very honorable status.

The English have certainly effectively used the medical

profession for holding us. English physicians are known to have used

their profession with several Asiatic potentates for political gain.

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. Their business is really to rid the body of

diseases that may afflict, it. How do these diseases arise? Surely by

our negligence or indulgence I overeat, I have indigestion, I go to a

doctor, he gives me medicine, I am cured. I overeat again, 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

overeaten 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.

I have indulged in vice, I contract a disease, a doctor cures

me, the odds are that I shall repeat the vice. Had the doctor not

intervened, nature would have done its work, and I would have

acquired mastery over myself, would have been freed from vice and

would have become happy.

Hospitals are institutions for propagating sin. Men take less

care of their bodies and immorality increases. 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 practice vivisection.

No religion sanctions this. All say that it is not necessary to take

so many lives for the sake of our bodies.

These doctors violate our religious instinct. Most of their

medical preparations contain either animal fat or spirituous liquors,

both of these are tabooed by Hindus and Mohammedans. We may pretend

to be civilized, call religious prohibitions a superstition and

wantonly indulge in what we like. The fact remains that the doctors

induce us to indulge, and the result is that we have become deprived

of self-control and have become effeminate. In these circumstances,

we are unfit to serve the country. To study European medicine is to

deepen our slavery.

It is worth considering why we take up the profession of

medicine. It is certainly not taken up for the purpose of serving

humanity. We become doctors so that we may obtain honors and riches.

I have endeavored to show that there is no real service of humanity

in the profession, and that it is injurious to mankind. Doctors make

a show of their knowledge, and charge exorbitant fees. Their

preparations, which are intrinsically worth a few pence, cost

shillings. The populace, in its credulity and in the hope of ridding

itself of some disease, allows itself to be cheated. Are not quacks

then whom we know, better than the doctors who put on an air of

humaneness?

 

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