It is certain that in this wonderful new age the development
of medical science will lead to the doctors’ healing their patients with foods.
For the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, of taste, of smell, of touch—all
these are discriminative faculties, their purpose being to separate the
beneficial from whatever causeth harm. Now, is it possible that man’s sense of
smell, the sense that differentiates odours, should find some odour repugnant,
and that odour be beneficial to the human body? Absurd! Impossible! In the same
way, could the human body, through the faculty of sight—the differentiator
among things visible—benefit from gazing upon a revolting mass of excrement?
Never! Again, if the sense of taste, likewise a faculty that selecteth and
rejecteth, be offended by something, that thing is certainly not beneficial;
and if, at the outset, it may yield some advantage, in the long run its
harmfulness will be established.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (‘Selections from the Writings
of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’)
