The New Nation - Internet Edition

The Unani system of medicine has always held blood as being of the greatest importance. Blood is considered to be the source of all general body fluids, including yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. The preservation, protection, and maintenance of the proper balance between the various humours and body fluids is the responsibility of the blood. This knowledge has been borne out by the findings of modern physiology.

Current research clearly supports the original concept of the Unani system of medicine, that skin diseases can only be treated effectively if the body's internal physiological imbalance is corrected. The term 'blood purifier' was introduced for this concept during the time of Galen, when he used this to describe the medicinal properties of Shahtara (Fumaria officinalis) as a drug which increases the choric urine.

The Unani system of medicine defines the concept of blood impurity as "the change in the composition of the blood or in its constituents in the form of blood dyscracias, there being a plethora or deficiency, a segregation or derangement brought about by internal or external causes."

The causes are many, and all of them have a direct or indirect influence on the blood. In fact, almost every single disease or symptom affecting the human body brings about, or is brought about by, an alteration in the blood composition.

Skin and its inter-linkage with blood

There is no skin disease which is not accompanied by a corresponding change in the blood. In the Unani system of medicine, the skin is next only to blood in importance. This is because the skin clearly manifests the changes taking place in the blood. This is so true that even a layman, leave alone the expert diagnostician, can notice these changes.

The emergence of Medical Elementology

Medical Elementology as a new discipline in science was instituted at the First International Conference on Elements in Health and Disease held in 1983 at Hamdard Nagar, New Delhi. Eighty-two eminent scientists from 18 countries, including two Nobel laureates, attended this landmark conference.

The papers presented at this conference, and the scholarly discussion which followed, clearly established that as many as 77 of the total 81 elements found in the human body were present in the blood. No organ or fluid of the human body can match up to this. The skin has 55 elements

The hair - 51

The nails - 45

The blood - 77

The element concentration in blood

The presence of all 77 elements in blood is under normal conditions, when no change has occurred due to allergy, bacteraemia, cyanosis, diabetes, leucoderma, etc. In these conditions, according to the Unani system of medicine, some changes must have taken place due to internal or external causes. The corresponding explanation in modern medical thought ascribes the 'impurity' in the blood to abnormal metabolic products, allergens, bacteria, viruses, bile pigments, carbon dioxide, ketone bodies, lipids, etc. The man-made mechanism for purification of the blood is dialysis, used in cases of acute renal failure.

-Hamdard