Food as Medicine: Part 6 - Proverbial Apples and Poultry-laden Soups

Food as Medicine:

Part 1 - Prehistory

Part 2 - Ancient Greece

Part 3 - Ancient China

Part 4 - India

Part 5 - Medieval Europe and the Middle East
Part 6 - Proverbial Apples and Poultry-laden Soups

Proverbial Apples and Poultry-laden Soups

 

In a final tidbit of knowledge to round things out, what of the doctor-repellant apples and the miracle cold cure soup? Do they really work or is it just a spot of folk wisdom?

Let's start with the apple. While an apple a day certainly won't guarantee great and everlasting health, apples have long been associated with a healthy diet. The adage itself is slightly younger. Originally popping up in 1860s Pembrokeshire as ‘‘Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread,” it evolved to a more rhythmic form in the early 20th century, “an apple a day, no doctor to pay," with the phrase we know today first recorded in 1922. Although the proverb has lasted awhile due to its memorable rhyming nature, the apple is a good source of Vitamin C, which aids the immune system. It also helps reduce tooth decay by cleaning teeth and killing bacteria. So an apple won't stop a broken leg or a tussle with a knife to the liver, but it will help with scurvy and scarlet fever.

As for chicken soup, its legend dates back to the 12th century when Rabbi Moses Maimonides published a book called "Medical Responsa," in which he praised the many health benefits of chicken soup. It was hailed as a cure for everything from pneumonia to a runny nose. What makes it effective as a cold remedy is not so much the chicken or the vegetables, both of which do provide nutrients and important vitamins, but rather it is the broth and the heat. Chicken soup is so comforting for the same reason it makes a sore throat feel better - it is salty. Salt helps kill off bacteria while the warmth of the soup warms the body and coaxes nasal mucus movement. In 2000, study by the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha demonstrated that chicken soup does indeed have anti-inflammatory properties that help reduce cold symptoms, yet many still believe chicken soup provides only a placebo effect due to its well-publicised legend.

Food as Medicine: Part 5 - Medieval Europe and the Middle East

Food as Medicine:

Part 1 - Prehistory

Part 2 - Ancient Greece

Part 3 - Ancient China

Part 4 - India

Part 5 - Medieval Europe and the Middle East
Part 6 - Proverbial Apples and Poultry-laden Soups

Medieval Europe and the Middle East 

After Rome was sacked by barbarian hordes and crumbled under its own decadence, a sheer mind-boggling amount of knowledge was lost. This signalled Europe's long and dreary dip into the Dark Ages. While medicine in China and India flourished, Europe floundered. However, while Europe sussed out how to fight disease through the employ of doctor barbers, there was yet another medical revolution going on in the Middle East. The Jewish and Muslim people made leaps and bounds in medical field during this time, even founding schools, hospitals and training the first proper doctors. While they used more scientific techniques, food was also still employed as treatment.

Both Europe and the Middle East still loosely practiced medicine using the Hippocratic humours theory. However, instead of providing just purely food and herbs, surgery became a more reliable means of treatment. This was particularly helpful as diseases like tonsillitis or appendicitis were fatal without surgery. However, certain advancements were made using food such as using wine, vinegar or salt water to clean wounds in order to prevent infection or the use of poppy seeds (opium) as a pain killer. 

As prominent doctors like Al-Razi and Ibn Sina had the forethought to compile medical knowledge, medicine underwent a renaissance which boomed and would eventually reach Europe around the same time the arts underwent their more famous Renaissance.

 

Food as Medicine: Part 4 - India

Food as Medicine:

Part 1 - Prehistory

Part 2 - Ancient Greece

Part 3 - Ancient China

Part 4 - India

Part 5 - Medieval Europe and the Middle East
Part 6 - Proverbial Apples and Poultry-laden Soups

India

India has had a long history with medicine, and is home to perhaps the oldest form of medicine as well. There are some schools of thought that believe it was the Indus Valley civilizations that first began to make strides in the field of medicine, but the proof of Indian medicine is much more solidly proven once the Vedic civilizations came around in 1,000 B.C. In fact, while Vedic medicine branches off in a few different schools, the Ayuveda train of thought is still referenced today for those in search of alternative medicine. 

After exploring ancient healing in China and Greece, India is the final nail in the "these theories are all really similar" coffin. Like Hippocrates and scholars in the Han Dynasty, Vedic medicine postulates that five elements make up all things and have a quality.

Earth is heavy and dry.
Water is cold and wet.
Fire is hot and light.
Wind is light and dry.
Space is light.

All of these elements must be kept in balance in the body according to ancient Ayurveda medicine. Aside from employing methods of heating, moistening and drying, the medicine also used food to counter the combining effects of the elements.

One of the most influential doctors was Mana Bajra Bajracharya. He based his practice on the hereditary knowledge of his patients, prescribing them specific diets based on their family history and after calculating their constitution through specific aspects of their body. He employed three diets: Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Vata covers movement, Pitta governs heat, and kapha encompasses structure; all three make up a healthy body.

For example, to stimulate the Vata, one would eat salty, fatty and hot foods to increase blood flow and stimulate everything from better skin to a better spring in your step. 

Ayurveda is incredibly in-depth and still remains as in-depth and as in use today as it was in ancient times, making it one of the longest lasting forms of medicine. Whether it works as good as modern medicine, that is a debate that holistic supporters and scientific supporters must mince out amongst themselves.

 

Food as Medicine: Part 3 - Ancient China

Food as Medicine:

Part 1 - Prehistory

Part 2 - Ancient Greece

Part 3 - Ancient China

Part 4 - India

Part 5 - Medieval Europe and the Middle East
Part 6 - Proverbial Apples and Poultry-laden Soups

Ancient China

Even today, China is famous for their use of food as medicine. The earliest work on the topic came about during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) with a book called The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine. Although now 2,000 years old, the tome still contains the basics of Chinese food therapy used today. 

The food written about within classifies the known ingredients into four food groups, five tastes and by their natures and characteristics. Like Hippocrates, the tome gave recommendations on what to eat in order to keep balance of qi, yin, yang and body fluids within the body. As the changes in weather also affected the balance in the body, Chinese food therapy also includes a number of seasonal dishes.

Even today, the amount ingredients used for medical purposes is enough to fill a book, or even multiple books, as medical cuisine was eventually broken into four categories: health-protection cuisine, prevention cuisine, healing cuisine and therapeutic cuisine.

Health-protection cuisine refers to the reinforcement of nutritional food to correspond to and maintain organic health. In more understandable terms, it basically boils down to eating things like a soup of pumpkin and almond to help lose weight; a soup of carp and angelica to increase natural beauty; or eating a ginseng congee (rice porridge) to increase strength.

Prevention cuisine is used to build resistance to ailments. This leads to dishes like mung bean soup, which is often eaten in the summer to prevent heat stroke.

Healing cuisine is where medicinal food is used for rehabilitation from illness. One of the most popular dishes among this subset of medical cuisine is broiled sheep's heart with rose to help raise a healthier constitution.

Finally, therapeutic cuisine aims at easing a specific ailment such as using fried potatoes with vinegar to help high blood pressure or a carp soup with Tickahoe to help reduce swelling.