No medical history is complete without enquiring about the patient’s food and drink intake. What people eat is one of the major environmental influences that affects health and can sooner or later contribute to disease. Lack of food or of essential nutrients in food also leads to disease.
From the time of Hippocrates diet has been a primary part of the management of sick people.
Hahnemann also emphasized importance of dietary habit of patient while taking the case.
? 94
While inquiring into the state of chronic disease, the particular circumstances of the patient with regard to his ordinary occupations, his usual mode of living and diet, his domestic situation, and so forth, must be well considered and scrutinized, to ascertain what there is in them that may tend to produce or to maintain disease, in order that by their removal the recovery may by prompted.
? 208
The age of the patient, his mode of living and diet, his occupation, his domestic position, his social relation and so forth, must next be taken into consideration, in order to ascertain whether these things have tended to increase his malady, or in how far they may favor or hinder the treatment. In like manner the state of his disposition and mind must be attended to, to learn whether that presents any obstacles to the treatment, or requires to be directed encouraged or modified.
? 260
Hence the careful investigation into such obstacles to cure is so much the more necessary in the case of patients affected by chronic diseases, as their diseases are usually aggravated by such noxious influences and other disease-causing errors in the diet and regimen, which often pass unnoticed.
singhal