It should be ob­vi­ous to any­one that tak­ing the words of any­one, in­clud­ing some­one you like (or even spe­cial­ly some­one you like) with­out skep­ti­cism is a dan­ger­ous path. For ex­am­ple, you may like Gand­hi's phi­los­o­phy of non-vi­o­lence, or ad­mire him for what­ev­er rea­son.

That is hard­ly an ex­cuse to take any­thing he said as worth much, spe­cial­ly when it's about sub­jects he had ab­so­lute­ly no idea about, be­cause he had a ten­den­cy to be ab­so­lute­ly sure he knew ev­ery­thing about ev­ery­thing.

For ex­am­ple, did you know he wrote a book about health? Here's a quote from it:

One ques­tion which I have asked my­self again and again, in the course of writ­ing this book, is why I of all per­sons should write it. Is there any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion at all for one like me, who am no doc­tor, and whose knowl­edge of the mat­ters dealt with in these pages must be nec­es­sar­i­ly im­per­fec­t, at­tempt­ing to write a book of this kind?

My de­fence is this. The “science” of medicine is it­self based up­on im­per­fect knowl­edge, most of it be­ing mere quack­ery. But this book, at any rate, has been prompt­ed by the purest of mo­tives. The at­tempt is here made not so much to show how to cure dis­eases as to point out the means of pre­vent­ing them. And a lit­tle re­flec­tion will show that the pre­ven­tion of dis­ease is a com­par­a­tive­ly sim­ple mat­ter, not re­quir­ing much spe­cial­ist knowl­edge, al­though it is by no means an easy thing to put these prin­ci­ples in­to prac­tice. Our ob­ject has been to show the uni­ty of ori­gin and treat­ment of all dis­eases, so that all peo­ple may learn to treat their dis­eases them­selves when they do arise, as they of­ten do, in spite of great care in the ob­ser­vance of the laws of health.

Do you no­tice the bait and switch? He knows lit­tle about the mat­ter, but he will write the book any­way be­cause it's re­al­ly about the sim­ple sub­ject of dis­ease pre­ven­tion. But read­ing it "all peo­ple may learn how to treat dis­eases them­selves". And not just a few dis­eases but all dis­eases. That para­graph reeks of false mod­esty and sim­ple dis­hon­esty.

But hey, did you know that he could cure the plague?

I have tried this sin­gle treat­ment [a mud poul­tice] for all va­ri­eties from sim­ple fever up to Bubon­ic Plague, with in­vari­ably sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sult­s.

Of course, in the next sen­tence it says:

In 1904, there was a se­vere out­break of plague among the In­di­ans in South Africa. It was so se­vere that, out of 23 per­sons that were af­fect­ed, as many as 21 died with­in the space of 24 hours; and of the re­main­ing two, who were re­moved to the hos­pi­tal, on­ly one sur­vived, and that one was the man to whom was ap­plied the mud-poul­tice.

I won­der what is a re­sult less than sat­is­fac­to­ry.

There are ob­vi­ous mis­un­der­stand­ings of ba­sic fact­s, such as how res­pi­ra­tion works [1] what the stom­ach does [2] and even how many bones there are in a hu­man chest, and there are, of course, things that are just weird:

Co­coa is ful­ly as harm­ful as cof­fee, and it con­tains a poi­son which dead­ens the per­cep­tions of the skin.

Even ha­bit­u­al cof­fee-­drinkers will be un­able to per­ceive any dif­fer­ence in taste be­tween cof­fee and this sub­sti­tute. Good and well-sift­ed wheat is put in­to a fry­ing-­pan over the fire and well fried, un­til it has turned com­plete­ly red, and be­gun to grow dark in colour. Then it is pow­dered just like cof­fee. A spoon of the pow­der is then put in­to a cup, and boil­ing wa­ter poured on to it. Prefer­ably keep the thing over the fire for a min­ute, and add milk and sug­ar, if nec­es­sary, and you get a de­li­cious drink, which is much cheap­er and health­i­er than cof­fee. Those who want to save them­selves the trou­ble of pre­par­ing this pow­der may get their sup­ply from the Satya­gra­ha Ashram, Ahmed­abad.

The first class, which is the largest, con­sists of those who, whether by pref­er­ence or out of ne­ces­si­ty, live on an ex­clu­sive veg­etable di­et. Un­der this di­vi­sion come the best part of In­di­a, a large por­tion of Eu­rope, and Chi­na and Japan. The sta­ple di­et of the Ital­ians is mac­a­roni, of the Irish pota­to, of the Scotch oat­meal, and of the Chi­nese and Ja­pa­nese rice. [3]

Wheat is the best of all the ce­re­al­s. Man can live on wheat alone, for in it we have in due pro­por­tion all the el­e­ments of nu­tri­tion. Many kinds of ed­i­bles can be made of wheat, and they can all be eas­i­ly di­gest­ed. [4] [...] man can re­tain his strength by liv­ing on mere wheat boiled in wa­ter.

And fi­nal­ly, there are the bits which are not just wrong, but al­so ab­so­lute­ly fuck­ing dan­ger­ous.

Did you know he says small­pox is not con­ta­gious, and is re­al­ly a di­ges­tive tract con­di­tion?

[S­mall­pox] is caused, just like oth­er dis­eases, by the blood get­ting im­pure ow­ing to some dis­or­der of the bow­el­s; and the poi­son that ac­cu­mu­lates in the sys­tem is ex­pelled in the form of smal­l­-pox. If this view is cor­rec­t, then there is ab­so­lute­ly no need to be afraid of smal­l­-pox. If it were re­al­ly a con­ta­gious dis­ease, ev­ery­one should catch it by mere­ly touch­ing the pa­tien­t; but this is not al­ways the case. [...] This has giv­en rise to the su­per­sti­tion that it is a con­ta­gious dis­ease, and hence to the at­tempt to mis­lead the peo­ple in­to the be­lief that vac­ci­na­tion is an ef­fec­tive means of pre­vent­ing it.

Oh, vac­ci­na­tion! You see, this book was pub­lished in 1921. By 1921, small­pox was al­ready dis­ap­pear­ing in Eu­rope be­cause vac­ciona­tion worked. And small­pox vac­ci­na­tion had worked for decades. He ei­ther knew noth­ing about how ef­fec­tive it was, or did not care.

I think the prob­lem here is, un­sur­pris­ing­ly, that to some­one with Gand­hi's back­ground vac­ci­na­tion was evil and just could­n't be ac­cept­ed as some­thing pos­i­tive.

Vac­ci­na­tion is a bar­barous prac­tice, and it is one of the most fa­tal of all the delu­sions cur­rent in our time, not to be found even among the so-­called sav­age races of the world.

[...]

More­over, vac­ci­na­tion is a very dirty pro­cess, for the serum which is in­tro­duced in­to the hu­man body in­cludes not on­ly that of the cow, but al­so of the ac­tu­al smal­l­-pox pa­tien­t. An av­er­age man would even vom­it at the mere sight of this stuff. If the hand hap­pens to touch it, it is al­ways washed with soap. The mere sug­ges­tion of tast­ing it fills us with in­dig­na­tion and dis­gust. But how few of those who get them­selves vac­ci­nat­ed re­alise that they are in ef­fect eat­ing this filthy stuff!

[...]

As has been well said, cow­ards die a liv­ing death, and our craze for vac­ci­na­tion is sole­ly due to the fear of death or dis­fig­ure­ment by smal­l­-pox. [5]

[...]

I can­not al­so help feel­ing that vac­ci­na­tion is a vi­o­la­tion of the dic­tates of re­li­gion and moral­i­ty. The drink­ing of the blood of even dead an­i­mals is looked up­on with hor­ror even by ha­bit­u­al meat-eater­s. Yet, what is vac­ci­na­tion but the tak­ing in of the poi­soned blood of an in­no­cent liv­ing an­i­mal? Bet­ter far were it for God-fear­ing men that they should a thou­sand times be­come the vic­tims of smal­l­-pox and even die a ter­ri­ble death than that they should be guilty of such an act of sac­ri­lege.

And there you have it, the clas­si­cal moral arith­metic of the re­li­gious: it is bet­ter for your son to die in hor­ri­ble suf­fer­ing or be dis­fig­ured than for a drop of cow serum to be in­ject­ed in him. How's that for non-vi­o­len­t?

Fuck that shit, Gand­hi. Fuck that shit.