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Nature Cure: Therapeutic uses of water, sunlight, air, massage, diet other Naturopathic methods
Nature Cure: Therapeutic uses of water, sunlight, air, massage, diet other Naturopathic methods
Nature Cure: Therapeutic uses of water, sunlight, air, massage, diet other Naturopathic methods
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Nature Cure: Therapeutic uses of water, sunlight, air, massage, diet other Naturopathic methods

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This book will help understand the methods used by Naturopathy which was given a new definition in India by Dr. Jussawalla several decades ago. There are valuable tips on how to lead a healthy life. You can see why Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Morarji Desai, Meena Kumari and several other well-known personalities resorted to Nature Cure.
The book may help you decide whether you need allopathy for immediate relief or if it is a better bet to change your lifestyle completely and remove the cause of the disease from the root. You will get to know the therapeutic uses of water, sunlight, air, massage, other Naturopathic methods, the right diet, the benefits of fasting, the virtues of vegetarianism, the importance of regular exercise, the value of sleep, the need for fellowship and a mind at peace with itself, the effects of colours, herbs, minerals, vitamins, even the zodiac, the harm from Genetically Modified foods, and so on.
You can also decide if you need to be vaccinated as the dangers of vaccination are being hotly discussed all over the world now. This book will open a window to the latest research on health, nutrition and fitness sourced from the most authentic and – sometimes -- even irreverent health gurus who oppose mainstream beliefs with sound empirical knowledge.
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LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 16, 2013
ISBN9789350574447
Nature Cure: Therapeutic uses of water, sunlight, air, massage, diet other Naturopathic methods

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    Chapter 1

    Dhanvantari Award

    At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.

    Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

    --Albert Schweitzer

    Quoting from the Citation

    Dhanvantari Foundation is honoured, happy and proud to make its 17th Dhanvantari Award, symbolic of recognition of the highest merit to you,

    Dr. J. M. Jussawalla an eminent naturopath.

    Sir, you have the distinction of being the first practitioner of naturopathy in which hoary discipline of medicine you are a pioneer in modern times to be chosen for the prestigious DHANVANTARI AWARD recognised as representing the highest honour conferred on a doctor in India.

    Sir, you have devoted a life-time to nature cure and are a naturopath of world fame, who at the ripe old age of 80 plus, go on propagating the prin–ciples of drugless method of curing diseases and demonstrate its efficacy through its application on a large scale. It is not for us to discuss and com–pare the merits of various ways of therapeutics. Suffice it to say that it occupies a high place in the community of kind interests, namely the health and physical welfare of mankind.

    In popularising the long-neglected naturopathy, you, Dr. Jussawalla, have played a most notable part. You strongly believe and not without any ba–sis that nothing cures like sunshine, fresh air, hygienic living, simple food which are the keys with which to unlock the hidden resources of strength and vitality in one’s body to remain healthy. The body itself is both a recre–ation ground and a mobile hospital.

    To give a biographical sketch born in 1907, you graduated from Davidson College of Natural Therapeutics in England and was appointed an assis–tant to Dr. V. Stanley Davidson of Lindhlar College, U. S. A. After return–ing to India, you found in 1938, the Natural Therapy Clinic in Bombay, of which are still the director. In 1947you were elected the All India Official Delegate to the Golden Jubilee Congress of the American Naturopathic As–sociation. You were also appointed a member of the Planning Commission on the Health Panel of the Government of India and an adviser to the Gov–ernment of India on Nature Cure, and served on the Nature Cure Advisory Board of the Government of Gujarat State.

    You are a Director and President in India, of the International Federation of the Scientific Research Society for the Prevention of Diseases by Drug– less Methods and Fellow of the Naturopathic Forest University where you received your doctorate in physical medicine in 1957.

    The honorary director and lecturer at the Physiotherapy Centre for the Blind in Bombay, you are the Vice–President of the All India Nature Cure Federation (Akhil Bharatiya Prakritik Chikitsa Parishad) and a practicing member of the Health Practitioners Association of London, after attaining by examination the required standard in naturopathy, iridiagnosis, oste–opathy and chiropractic. You are also a permanent member of the American Naturopathic Association since 1947 and have been appointed a Special Representative of the International Society of USA Naturopathic physi–cians for India. You are the vice–chairman of the Vegetarian Society, Bom–bay, President of Nature Cure Practitioners Guild (Bombay), and a member of the Governing Body of the Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy. You are a member of the Scientific and Financial Advisory Committee (Naturopathy) of the Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy.

    In these various capacities, besides pioneering in the field of naturopathy you have rendered yeoman services in the cause of its progress in India, which had spearheaded its development in ages gone by. Sir, we hope that your recommendation to the Union Government which has recognised na–ture cure should set up a separate board or panel for the system under the Central Council for Research in Yoga and Naturopathy for training and registration will be implemented. And also your desire for the establishment of a Nature Cure College with the status of a University in New Delhi with a Hospital attached will be fulfilled before long. Once such centres are opened, the new comers in the field will be enabled to be equipped with the necessary qualifications to tend patients and handle cases with confidence and authority, you further opine. Your advocacy for a uniform code of eth–ics for practitioners of all systems of medicine too will not be in vain, we feel.

    Dr. Jussawalla, in conformity with your philosophy of life, you have re–mained a man of simple living and high thinking, besides being a prag–matist, your austerity, kindness to all living creatures, your humane ap–proach to every problem, virtuosity in your calling and faithful adherence to the Hippocratic oath embodying the duties and obligations of physicians, constitute a model for others to follow.

    May God grant you long life, health and happiness.

    With the above citation, I, as the President of the Governing Council of Dhanvantari Foundation, am pleased to hand over this Award in the shape of a Statuette of Dhanvantari, primogenitor of all medical sciences, to be presented to you now by the Chief Guest of this ceremony His Excellency Shri %. Brahmanand Rgddy to you, Sir, with prayers for a further long period of service to the medical profession and the well–being of society.

    The citation, named after Dhanvantari, the God of Health and one of the 24 avatars of Vishnu, was signed by K. Brahmanand Reddy, Governor of Maharashtra, Jawaharlal Darda, Minister for Public health, Sushilkumar S. Shinde, Minister for Finance and Industries, Suresh Chaturvedi, Secretary General of the Dhanvantari Foundation, and Dr. B. K. Goyal, its Founder President.

    The Dhanvantari Award was presented to Dr. Jussawalla at a glittering function in Mumbai on Saturday, October 28, 1989. He became the first naturopath to receive the prestigious award and joined an elite band of previous awardees that included Dr. Rustom Jal Vakil, Dr. B.N.Purandare, Dr. C.Gopalan, Dr. B.Ramamurthi, Dr. L.H.Hiranandani, Dr. Christian Bernard, heart transplant surgeon, and Dr. Denton A.Cooley of Houston, Texas, the renowned cardiac surgeon.

    Dr. Jehangir Jussawalla was 82 years old.

    Chapter 2

    A Pioneering Doctor

    The Nature Cure man does not ‘sell a cure’ to the patient. He teaches him the right way of living in his home, which would not only cure him of his particular ailment but also save him from falling ill in future. The ordinary doctor or vaidya is interested mostly in the study of disease. The Nature Curist is interested more in the study of health. His real interest begins where that of the ordinary doctor ends; the eradication of the patient’s ail–ment under Nature Cure marks only the beginning of a way of life in which there is no room for illness or disease. Nature Cure is thus a way of life, not a course of ‘treatment’. It is not claimed that Nature Cure can cure all dis–eases. No system of medicine can do that or else we should all be immortals.

    -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Harijan, 7-4-1946

    Naturopathy has captured the I world’s imagination today. Alternate therapies are slowly replacing conventional medicine as the first line of medical treatment. But what has now snowballed into gigantic proportions globally began with tiny baby steps. Dr. Jussawalla could well be called one of the pioneers who set the ball rolling. Without a doubt, he was the first to give the naturopathy movement in India a modern touch.

    Dr. Jussawalla understood the complexities of the human body well, which, in a way, would always defy comprehension. It would always stay a step ahead of all the medical marvels science threw up. Despite his successes, he made no grandiose claims about naturopathy; he never claimed that it had all the cures for all the ills of the flesh. He insisted, on the contrary, that no system can be a cure–all or even claim to have a monopoly on the truth. Throughout his career, he tried to synchronise different systems of medicine in his theory and his practice.

    His major contributions to what he called ‘the art of healing’ were in the fields of accurate, often intuitive diagnosis, diet and a variety of treatments like massage, hydrotherapy, sitz baths, jet and needle baths, sun–lamp therapy and colonic irrigation. Long before the current boom in fitness centres, he offered systematic programmes for weight gain and weight loss through diet and exercises. For most of his six decades of practice at the Natural Therapy Clinic, he offered natural methods of treatments not found in other clinics in Bombay (Mumbai). His aim was to provide every possible form of Nature Cure treatment under one roof. The rash of clinics these days calling for a return to nature as a panacea is ample evidence that what he began –– with some amount of uncertainty and a great deal of opposition –– works!

    As his stature as a doctor grew, Dr. Jussawalla was invited to Nature Cure conferences abroad and given important positions. In 1947, he was India’s official delegate at the Golden Jubilee Congress of the American Naturopathic Association, USA. He was on the Planning Commission for the Third Five–Year plan, on the Health Panel of the Government of India and was on the Nature Cure Advisory Board to the Gujarat State Government. He was also an advisor on Nature Cure to the Government of India for many years. He also tirelessly worked with the students of the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind in Bombay (Mumbai) and made several of them successful professional masseurs.

    Apart from practising naturopathy, Dr. Jussawalla also believed in spreading the message of Nature Cure and wrote several books, monograms and booklets. He also had the humility to encourage and not debunk or ridicule local systems of medicine which often came up with miraculous cures at a fraction of the cost and time conventional medicine would take to affect a cure. He wanted them to be systemised, and insisted that the cures attributed to such systems should be scientifi cally investigated and not be castigated as mere ‘quackery’.

    To systemise natural healing, Dr. Jussawalla made a strong pitch for the promotion of Nature Cure in the Third Five–Year Plan. Way back on August 18, 1960, as a member of the Health Panel, Government of India Planning Commission, he emphatically stated that, There is a prime need for a teaching and treating institute to standardise the science of nature cure, so that this valuable system as well as its accredited practitioners may secure the legal recognition they deserve as well as the confidence of the public. In a brochure presented to the government of India he added, It is high time that the state considered this system that has forged its way to the front on the sheer merits of its commonsense and logic, as well as its intellectual appeal, and recognised its claim. In the interests of public health it has become absolutely imperative that the State does so. Besides improving the health of mankind by pure, simple, natural and harmless remedies, it will lift practitioners from the quagmire of quackery. It will standardise therapeutics and give its seal of a qualified status to nature cure professionals. Once the standard is set, the newcomers in the field will be equipped with the necessary qualifications to handle a case with authority, confidence and safety to the patient. Nature cure is providing as much a thing of public utility as any other medical service.

    Naturopathy has millions of adherents today. Its enormous success as a viable, non–invasive and non–violent healing modality is a tribute to the hard work and determination of a young Parsi doctor who braved the odds, stepped out of line, and spent his entire life living his dream with a rare passion.

    Chapter 3

    Early Years and Influences

    Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

    --George Bernard Shaw

    To get to know more about his early life and influences, I am with Adil, his eldest son and well-known poet, writer and editor, at his Cuffe Parade residence in Mumbai. Sparrows chirp in the balcony as the evening sun patterns artful designs on the wall. We sip green tea and talk.

    Dr. Jehangir Jussawalla was born on November 18, 1907 in Temple Road, Lahore, Pakistan, (then British India) to Aimai and Merwan in the Parsi month of Khordad. Aimai was from the well-known Dhanjibhoy Commodore family. Her father was a Khan Bahadur who was almost knighted for his loyalty to the British during the Afghan wars, the Boer War and the Boxer Rebellion. He ran a well equipped Tonga, Mail and Carrying Agency called Dhanjiboy & Son. Thanks to its efficiency, the journey from Rawalpindi to Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, a distance of 200 miles, which earlier took about 14 days could be completed in a mere 24 hours! His tonga transport service and a pony drawn ambulance, called the Tonga Ambulance also often bailed the British out of tight situations during the wars. The British, of course, were more than grateful for all this.

    The Khan Bahandur was a colourful personality and wore many hats. He was also a Governor of the Hindu Technical Institute, in Lahore; a member of the Muree Municipal Committee for 25 years, and its Vice-President for about 12 years; he was an Honorary Magistrate for the District, exercising First Class powers, for about nine years. In addition to several other positions, he was also appointed a Life Honorary Member of the Calcutta Light Horse.

    He received many awards. In addition to being made a Khan Bahadur, he was bestowed the title -- Companion of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, and for his public services, he was conferred the Kaiser-i-Hind First Class Gold Medal. Additionally, he also had a distinguished Masonic career. He was a successful, popular and wealthy man. He died in 1911, says Adil.

    The Khan Bahadur had a son and three daughters. He had also expanded his business interests and bought land and property in Mumbai. Aimai, one of the daughters, married Meherwanjee. Later, in 1914, she left Lahore and her husband and came to Pune and later Bombay (now Mumbai) with her four sons — Savak, Kakku, Jehangir and Eruch. One daughter died in infancy. Bombay wasn’t new to her as she made frequent visits to the city and had many friends. From Bombay she moved to Pune which was cooler, less populated and had more open space, continues Adil. Jehangir was seven when he came to Mumbai. By the 1930s the family moved to Hill Crest, Salsbury Park, in Pune. For about 15 years, they lived in different places in Pune. Kakku wanted to be an agriculturist and he bought land in Pune and ran a successful poultry farm in the 1940s. Later, in Bombay, Savak, the eldest, ran an electric shop at Gowalia Tank and Erach ran an air-conditioning set-up. It could easily be said that we were migrants to Mumbai and were a second generation nuclear family.

    Scout Movement

    Jehangir had his early education in Lahore and Murree Hills after which he continued his education in Pune. He was a good student but there was nothing exceptional about his early life that could provide a window to the meteoric trail he would later blaze as a naturopath of consequence. But, looking back, circumstances were forging him in that direction.

    Jehangir never seriously considered becoming a doctor until he was in his twenties. As a schoolboy, he cycled, swam, played the violin and spent the rest of the time in study. He was shy and kept to himself. To overcome his natural introversion, he was advised to become a Scout which he reluctantly did. The Scout movement inspired him, he liked being a Scout, and after passing a scoutmaster examination when he was 15, was made assistant scoutmaster of the Second Poona Parsi Troop. He also led the Scouts of the Bombay Presidency to a world jamboree in Liverpool.

    When I was at school I used to spend most of my time studying, reading, building up my body and learning, he mentions in a diary he main-tained. One day the head teacher of the class complained to my brother, who was mainly responsible for bringing me and my three brothers up, that I was keeping aloof from my schoolmates and that I should mix with them and take more active part in school life. I reluctantly joined the Scouts. I was soon wholly involved in the Scout movement. Its principles and laws greatly impressed me. They emphasised, temperance, character building and self- help. Much later, he would acknowledge his years as a scout along with the other influences that shaped his life, My years in the scout movement, physical culture and Nature Cure have all helped me to realise this -- that man’s most rational approach to himself and his prob-lem has always lain along the path of self-control, self- discipline and self-denial.

    Physical Culture

    Jehangir, quite like the great yoga guru B.K.S.Iyengar in his younger days, had a somewhat frail constitution. His eyesight deteriorated as a schoolboy and he began wearing glasses which he didn’t particularly like. He also took to physical culture, which was a fad among young Parsis in the 1920s, to build his frail physique. Father’s heroes were Rustom Pehlwan from an earlier time, to be replaced in the 1950s by the wrestlers Dara Singh and King Kong, remembers Adil. At age 20, after training at the Southern Command military centre in Poona, he became a physical training instructor at Deccan College. The hard work and strict discipline of the military roughened me. This made a positive change in my outlook on life and was one of the first steps towards a crucial point in it later, adds the diary jottings.

    But remarkably, a few months before becoming a physical instructor, he found he didn’t need glasses. Jehangir had been in contact with Dr. Bernard MacFadden, the American father of physical culture and was prescribed a course of eye exercises. His eyesight was restored to normalcy. If this wasn’t a miracle it was, at the very least, proof that natural methods of healing worked. He could see this clearly. This could well have sowed the seeds of natural healing and given his career aspirations a clear plank to build on. He mentions in his diary: "I used to correspond with Bernard Macfadden and received many encouraging letters concerning the maintaining of health and physical fitness without the use of drugs. His response made me study his eight volumes on physical culture and drugless healing."

    Fateful Contact

    In 1929, when Dr. Dinshah K.Mehta, arguably the pioneer of naturopathy in India, who, reportedly, discovered at the age of seven, that the purpose of life is perfection, started his Nature Cure Clinic, with a tap of cold water and a galvanised tub, as his biographer Sundri P. Vaswani put it, Jehangir was paradoxically one of his first patients. A physical culturist in his younger days, Mehta had a great body which helped enhance his magnetic personality. He posed easily to show off his musculature and also performed feats such as having a car run over him. Later, as he evolved spiritually, he metamorphosed from a conservatively dressed doctor to Dadaji, resplendent in saffron robes, his full white beard reaching halfway down his chest. Mehta also conceived of the Bhagwan Bhojan, Ram Roti and Sita Soup meals which were nutritious and within the means of the masses. These spiritual meals were served for eight years in both Houses of Parliament. Mehta also established the Society of Servants of God.

    Jehangir had earlier trained under Mehta at his physical culture centre and knew him well. But this time the circumstances were different. He had fallen in love with Nergish, his first cousin, and when his feelings weren’t reciprocated he was distraught. Two bad attacks of influenza had weakened his heart. He needed to get well and reposed faith in Dinshah Mehta to get him back on his feet. His diary dated October 31, 1929, reads, Treatment of fasting, milk diet, exercises under Dinshah (sic) Mehta in Poona. He adds, on an earlier occasion, When I heard about Dr. Dinshah K. Metha’s Nature Cure Clinic in Poona I joined it, chiefly interested in exercise there. Later he himself introduced me to the principles of Nature Cure. That was the main turning point in my life. I took a firm decision at a crossroads. But at what cost? Nature Cure at that time (1931) was totally misunderstood and misinterpreted. I went against the wishes of everyone, save my mother. My superiors, relatives and the medical gurus under whom I was going through my pre-medical studies were horrified. So prejudiced were they against this science that my chief doctor-professor warned me not to take such a foolish step, as he called it, towards ‘sheer Quakery’. He considered all practitioners of Nature Cure, nothing less than charlatans.

    Again, Jehangir recovered, and along with the success of the eye exercises was more than convinced that naturopathy worked. He was now well set for a

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