disorders (e.g., abnormal blood glucose levels may indicate hypoglycemia
or diabetes). The pharmaceutical treatment of illness entails introduction
of chemical agents into the body to improve functioning and relieve dis-
comfort. Equilibrium in a pharmacological context does not generally
entail direct replacement of a particular chemical compound that the
body lacks (though in some cases this is so). Rather, the restoration of
equilibrium by pharmacology consists in chemically establishing condi-
tions that support normal functions of the body, so that they prevail over
factors causing malfunction. Åyurvedic pharmacology emphasizes the
patient’s particular circumstances in administration of medicines:
It is necessary to take into account the place where the drugs are pro-
duced, the physical conditions of the patient, the appropriate dose of the
drug, and the seasonal variation as well as the age of the patient.
AD 1:1.62–63Åyurvedic diagnosis and treatment invoke the idea of balance not merely
for pharmaceutical applications, but as it pertains to the relationship
between persons and their environment and life-circumstances. Dash and
Junius note that the idea of balance can apply to relationships with fam-
ily, friends, work, culture, and God.^22 An important application of the
idea of equilibrium in the context of health is avoidance of extremes in
diet, sleep, work, recreation and other activities.
Adaptation
Medical theorist Claude Bernard, working in the nineteenth-century cli-
mate of Lamarck’s and Darwin’s evolutionary theories, regarded disease
as a result of an organism’s failure to adapt to environmental insults.^23
Brody and Sobel’s systems-theory of healthassumes Dubos’ position that
“states of health or disease are the expression of the success or failure ex-
perienced by an organism in its effort to respond adaptively to environ-
mental challenges.”^24 The systems-theory view of health incorporates
various ‘levels’ or domains, through which information flows in a pattern
of feedback loops: “component A influences component B and the new
state of B then ‘feeds back’ to influence A.”^25 Brody and Sobel summarize
the concept of health as “the ability of a system (e.g., cell, organism, fam-
ily, society) to respond adaptively to a wide variety of environmental
challenges (e.g., physical, chemical, infectious, psychological, social).”^26
Adaptation in the Darwinian sense of reproductive success is one
meaning of adaptation, but adaptation further refers to an organism’s
having a relation to its environment that is both self-preserving and ac-
one line long
54 religious therapeutics