40 THE WEEK • JUNE 30, 2019
1914 at age 45, his journey on SS Arabia was
signifi cant for a very special reason. Rajmo-
han writes, “On this voyage, for the fi rst time
ever since their marriage, Kasturba had her
husband wholly to herself. Th is was the only
journey—whether by road or rail or ship or
in any other way—where Mohandas and
Kasturba travelled just by themselves.”ASPIRANT DOCTOR, IMPOSSIBLE PATIENT
Much has been written about his all-con-
suming desire to study law in London.
However, not many know that Gandhi was
equally interested in studying medicine. His
family disapproved of the medical vocation;
being Vaishnavas they did not want him to
deal with dead bodies. Even while prac-
tising law in South Africa, he continued to
harbour this vague desire to study medicine
in London. But in 1909, he wrote to a friend
that if pursuing a medical degree involved
dissection of frogs and other living beings,
he would much rather not study it. But this
did not in any way diminish his interest in
health, hygiene and nutrition. His youngest
son, Devdas, born in South Africa on May
23, 1900, was midwifed by Gandhi himself
after he read Dr Tribhuvandas’s book on safe
labour. He advocated nature cure, fasting,
hydrotherapy and earth treatment, and
experimented a lot with dietetics. In spite of
a disciplined lifestyle, Gandhi struggled with
several health issues. Th is include pleurisy
(1914), acute dysentery (1918 and 1929),
malaria (1925, 1936, 1944), gastric fl u (1939),
infl uenza (1945), piles (1919) and severe ap-
pendicitis (1924), as compiled in the Indian
Journal of Medical Research’s Gandhi and
Health @150.
In South Africa, he often suff ered from
debility, rheumatic infl ammation, constipa-
tion and frequent headaches. He once heard
about the ‘No Breakfast Association’ in Man-
chester which helped improve the health of
“Englishmen who ate too much” and this
led Gandhi to start skipping his breakfast.
“For a few days it was rather hard, but the
headaches entirely disappeared. Th is led me
to conclude that I was eating more than I
needed,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Gandhi’s doctors have reminisced abouttheir diffi cult patient who had abjured medi-
cines, milk and eggs as part of his experiments.
Dr G.R. Talwalkar once wrote how puzzled a
team of doctors were when Gandhi refused
injections of emetine for acute dysentery—the
only treatment for the condition then. But Gan-
dhi agreed to take enema. So the doctors added
a full dose of emetine and morphia to enema
water. Th e enema procedure improved his con-
dition within the next 24 hours that he volun-
tarily asked for a repetition of the procedure for
next fi ve successive days. Gandhi added roti and
chapatti to his regular meal only after Talwalkar
convinced him that a diet of a dozen oranges a