“Marvelous healing”

The birth centenary of Dr Jehangir Jussawalla is an occasion for considerable gratitude as in our midst during the 20th century lived a perfect gentleman who devoted his life to studying, discovering, upholding and teaching one of the most fundamental and vital truths in the form of the laws of health.

Jussawalla was a naturopath who expounded upon the principles of health-science in their entirety. He believed that perfect health has its roots in submission to the Divine and thus embraces the trinity of the body, mind and spirit. He reckoned that dietetic principles and physical culture cater to the body, yoga and meditation to the mind and that prayers uplift the spirit whereas drugs and medicine are, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, incurably damaging. To him, a doctor is a teacher who inspires patients to maintain or regain sound health by cooperating with the patient’s self-healing capacity and instructing them regarding dietary issues, exercise programs and the appropriate mental outlook.

Besides practising vegetarianism for over six decades, he was a life-long teetotaller. In one of the many books he wrote, he stated that alcohol is "pure poison” and unlike most foods, is harmful even when its consumption is minuscule. To many, Jussawalla’s life-style must have characterized excessive self-control, abstinence and austerity. However, he was an extremely positive person, displayed a delightfully ordered and muscular body, read in artificial light and drove a car at night without visual aid even as an octogenarian and enjoyed perfect health until a couple of accidents led to the intervention of allopaths.

I was privileged to know him from my earliest days. He was totally different from most men of his generation. He was very kind, sought good treatment for animals and, like my own father, was clean-looking, clean-minded and muscular. As I had always thought that the killing of animals for any purpose other than self-defence is cruel, I was thrilled, as a teenager to read an essay he wrote in The Times of India on vegetarianism and to learn that he was similarly inclined. Moreover, I found it very encouraging that, in a society where alcohol consumption is viewed as a criterion of masculinity and hosts tend to accept that it represents the ultimate in terms of human contentment, a mature professional of my own ethnic background was a teetotaller. These facts, together with the knowledge that his style of healing employed neither a needle nor a knife made me keen, during my late teens, to place my health-care in his hands.

The idea was resisted by my family for my father, who did not know Jussawalla closely, pronounced him to be a quack and at a later date said he was money-minded. My paternal grandfather, a doctor and a possessor of the Licentiate of medicine and surgery, had contended that Jussawalla was not qualified to use the preface ‘Doctor’ or recommend drugs. I remember receiving marvelous healing from Jussawalla. When I was working in England during my mid-20s, I was for the better part of a year plagued with pain and loss of blood on account of problems of piles and fissures and I dreaded the possibility of a surgery. I travelled to Bombay to consult Jussawalla who cured me within six weeks via a carefully structured diet, ointments and mild medicine.

By no means very doctrinaire, Jussawalla confined his interest in vegetarianism to food rather than wearing apparel. With patients who preferred to stay away from the radical aspects of naturopathy he conducted himself as a conventional doctor though any drugs that he administered were mild. His adherence to vegetarianism did not prevent him from being objective, unlike his colleagues, when he described the characteristics of fish and eggs in his books. Though he criticized allopathy in his writings, he valued allopathic approval of himself and the solidarity between different branches of the healing profession was important to him.

Like almost all other naturopaths, Jussawalla never quite realized that the diet he recommended is extremely difficult to follow except for naturopaths themselves who tend to enjoy all their meals in their homes, for the suggested food and drink are seldom available at restaurants or at friends’ homes, and the human being is a socializing animal. Jussawalla’s family claimed that he steered clear of personal friendships but this did not deter almost all his patients from viewing him as a friend!

Jussawalla was highly evolved, liberal, patient and emotionally self-controlled. He was able to accept harmoniously that neither of his sons was a vegetarian nor would either of these highly gifted men follow in his professional footsteps. He may have found it more challenging to come to terms, during the final decade of his life, with the fact that he was unlikely to become a grandfather and his even greater devotion to naturopathy after he passed the age of three-score and 10 may have reflected his realization that he could look only to himself for fulfilment. He devoted almost all his time to quiet contemplation, seeking to unravel the mysteries of the vast subject of health and apply them to his patients and himself.

Although he had a good intuitive understanding of Western classical music it is questionable whether the naturopath would have had a more rounded personality and an even greater rapport with his patients if he had participated in an activity unrelated to naturopathy and vegetarianism, such as bridge or golf.

In his dedication to the art of healing and his own practice of its principles, Jussawalla was almost unique. The past did not see his like. The future is unlikely to do so. We were specially favored.

KAIKHUSHRU LAM