Mahatma Gandhi aptly titled his autobiography My Experiments with Truth. His life was indeed an unending series of experiments—not just with moral values and philosophical ideas, but also with practical matters such as diet, health, and everyday living. In some of these, especially his experiments with natural cures, he took bold risks which he later admitted he would not repeat.
One notable area was his use of earth and water as healing agents—his now-famous mud baths and sun treatments. At Tolstoy Farm in South Africa, Gandhi treated many who came to him with various ailments. Sometimes, his methods worked remarkably well, but he himself acknowledged that success may have depended on a combination of luck, the patient’s physical constitution, the local climate, and perhaps even sheer faith.
Importantly, Gandhi cautioned against blindly following his example. In today’s world—marked by pollution, lifestyle disorders, and a weakened immune response—the same methods may not yield similar results. However, the spirit behind these efforts remains deeply relevant: the desire to return to simple, natural, and sustainable living, especially in a country like India where such traditions are rooted in ancient practices.
As someone who personally incorporates natural remedies into my own life—though not for every ailment—I find Gandhi’s approach both inspiring and instructive. The following summary of excerpts from Satyagraha in South Africa offers a glimpse into his fearless and deeply spiritual journey through the discipline of self-experimentation.
Summary of Gandhi’s Experiments from Satyagraha in South Africa
Gandhi reflects on his experiments with diet, health, and spiritual life at Tolstoy Farm. His commitment to natural living influenced the entire community.
He recounts treating Lutavan, an elderly asthma patient, using a strict natural regimen that included a 24-hour fast, sunbathing, mud treatments, and a tobacco-free, bland diet. Although Lutavan secretly smoked at night, Gandhi discovered this and gently corrected him. After giving up tobacco completely, Lutavan recovered fully within a month.
Gandhi also treated a child believed to have typhoid using mashed banana with olive oil, fruit juice, and mud poultices, with apparent success. While he questions whether the diagnosis was accurate, he notes that none of his treatments failed during that time. However, he later admits that he would hesitate to repeat such methods today.
These experiments were not merely physical; they had a spiritual aim. Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach even gave up milk after learning about the cruel phuka method used in India. They adopted a fruitarian diet for five years, abstaining from all cooked food. Gandhi walked up to 55 miles in a day during this period and reported no loss of health or energy. He saw these dietary experiments as a form of penance and spiritual purification.
Tolstoy Farm itself was more than a community; it was a spiritual training ground. The simplicity, mutual care, and shared sacrifices built unity among the Satyagrahis and moral authority for the movement. Though the Farm was never in the public eye, Gandhi believed it played a crucial role in sustaining the eight-year Satyagraha struggle in South Africa.
He concludes with a practical tip from his health booklet—a recipe for a coffee substitute made from roasted wheat, once again reflecting his deep engagement with both personal and communal well-being.—This summary is based on Satyagraha in South Africa, www.mkgandh.org [from the author’s Gujarati booklet on health, Chapter V. Indian Opinion, XI-10, March 8, 1913. – V.G.D. 36.] pp. 237-240
Ashram, July 29, 2025
This is from Satyagraha in South Africa
…It will not perhaps be amiss here to take note of an irrelevant incident. I have been fond for about the last thirty-five years of making experiments in dietetics from the religious, economic and hygienic standpoints. This predilection for food reform still persists. People around me would naturally be influenced by my experiments. Side by side with dietetics, I made experiments in treating diseases with natural curative agents only such as earth and water and without recourse to drugs. When I practiced as barrister, cordial relations were established with my clients so that we looked upon one another almost as members of the same family. The clients therefore made me a partner in their joys and sorrows. Some of them sought my advice being familiar with my experiments in nature cure. Stray patients of this class would sometimes arrive at Tolstoy Farm. One of these was Lutavan, an aged client who first came from North India as an indentured labourer. He was over seventy years old and suffered from chronic asthma and cough. He had given long trials to vaidyas’ powders and doctors’ mixtures. In those days I had boundless faith in the efficacy of my methods of curing disease, and therefore I agreed not indeed to treat him but to try my experiments upon him if he lived on the Farm and observed all my conditions. Lutavan complied with my conditions. One of these www.mkgandhi.org Page 237 Satyagraha in South Africa was that he should give up tobacco to which he was strongly addicted. I made him fast for 24 hours. At noon every day I commenced giving him a Kuhne bath in the sun, as the weather then was not extra warm. For food he had a little rice, some olive oil, honey, and along with honey, porridge and sweet oranges sometimes and at other times grapes and wheaten coffee. Salt and all condiments whatever were avoided. Lutavan slept in the same building as myself but in the inner apartment. For bed everyone was given two blankets, one for spreading and the other for covering purposes, and a wooden pillow. A week passed. There was an accession of energy in Lutavan’s body. His asthma and cough gave less trouble, but he had more fits at night than by day. I suspected he was smoking secretly, and I asked him if he did. Lutavan said he did not. A couple of days passed and as still there was no improvement, I determined to watch Lutavan secretly. Everyone slept on the floor, and the place was full of snakes. Mr. Kallenbach had therefore given me an electric torch and kept one himself. I always slept with this torch by my side. One night I resolved to lie in the bed awake. My bed was spread on the verandah just near the door, and Lutavan slept inside but also near the door. Lutavan coughed at midnight, lighted a cigarette and began to smoke. I slowly went up to his bed and switched on the torch. Lutavan understood everything and became nervous. He ceased smoking, stood up and touched my feet. ‘I have done a great wrong,’ he said. ‘I will never smoke again henceforth. I have deceived you. Please excuse me.’ So saying he almost began to sob. I consoled him and said that it was in his interest not to smoke. His cough should have been cured according to my calculations, and when I found that he was still suffering from it, I had suspected that he was smoking secretly. Lutavan gave up smoking. His asthma and cough grew less severe in two or three days, and in a month he was perfectly cured. He was now full of vigour and took his leave of us. The station master’s son, a child of two years, had an attack of typhoid. This gentleman too knew about my curative methods, and sought my advice. On the first day I gave the child no food at all, and from the second day onwards only half a banana well mashed with a spoonful of olive oil and a few drops of sweet orange juice. At night I applied a cold mud poultice to the child’s www.mkgandhi.org Page 238 Satyagraha in South Africa abdomen, and in this case too my treatment was successful. It is possible that the doctor’s diagnosis was wrong and it was not a case of typhoid. I made many such experiments on the Farm, and I do not remember to have failed in even a single case. But today I would not venture to employ the same treatment. I would now shudder to have to give banana and olive oil in a case of typhoid. In 1918, I had an attack of dysentery myself and I failed to cure it. And I cannot say to this very day, whether it is due to my want of self confidence or to the difference in climate that the same treatment which was effective in South Africa Is not equally successful in India. But this I know that the home treatment of diseases and the simplicity of our life on Tolstoy Farm were responsible for a saving of at least two to three lakhs of public money. The settlers learned to look upon one another as members of the same family, the Satyagrahis secured a pure place of refuge, little scope was left for dishonesty or hypocrisy and the wheat was separated from the tares. The dietetic experiments thus far detailed were made from a hygienic standpoint, but I conducted a most important experiment upon myself which was purely spiritual in its nature. I had pondered deeply and read widely over the question whether as vegetarians we had any right to take milk. But when I was living on the Farm, some book or newspaper fell into my hands, in which I read about the inhuman treatment accorded to cows in Calcutta in order to extract the last drop of milk from them, and came across a description of the cruel and terrible process of phuka. I was once discussing with Mr. Kallenbach the necessity for taking milk, and in course of the discussion, I told him about this horrible practice, pointed out several other spiritual advantages flowing from the rejection of milk, and observed that it was desirable to give up milk if it was possible. Mr. Kallenbach with his usual spirit of a knight-errant was ready at once to launch upon the experiment of doing without milk, as he highly approved of my observations. The same day both he and I gave up milk, and in the end we came to restrict ourselves to a diet of fresh and dried fruit, having eschewed all cooked food as well. I may not here go into the later history of this experiment or tell how it www.mkgandhi.org Page 239 Satyagraha in South Africa ended, but I may say this, that during five years of a purely fruitarian life I never felt weak, nor did I suffer from any disease. Again during the same period I possessed the fullest capacity for bodily labour, so much so that one day I walked 55 miles on foot, and 40 miles was an ordinary day’s journey for me. I am firmly of opinion that this experiment yielded excellent spiritual results. It has always been a matter of regret for me that I was compelled somewhat to modify my fruitarian diet, and if I were free from my political preoccupations, even at this age of my life and at a risk to my body I would revert to it today further to explore its spiritual possibilities. The lack of spiritual insight in doctors and vaidyas has also been an obstacle in my path. But I must now close this chapter of pleasant and important reminiscences. Such dangerous experiments could have their place only in a struggle of which self-purification was the very essence. Tolstoy Farm proved to be a centre of spiritual purification and penance for the final campaign. I have serious doubts as to whether the struggle could have been prosecuted for eight years, whether we could have secured larger funds, and whether the thousands of men who participated in the last phase of the struggle would have borne their share in it, if there had been no Tolstoy Farm. Tolstoy Farm was never placed in the limelight, yet an institution which deserved it attracted public sympathy to itself. The Indians saw that the Tolstoy Farmers were doing what they themselves were not prepared to do and what they looked upon in the light of hardship. This public confidence was a great asset to the movement when it was organized afresh on a large scale in 1913. One can never tell whether such assets give an account of themselves, and if yes, when. But I do not entertain and would ask the reader not to entertain, a shadow of a doubt that such latent assets do in God’s good time become patent. 1. A harmless and nutritious substitute for tea, coffee or cocoa can be prepared as follows. Even connoisseurs of coffee have failed to perceive any difference in taste between coffee and this substitute. Bake well-cleaned wheat on the fire, until it has turned quite red and begun to grow dark in colour. Then powder it like coffee. Take a spoonful of this powder in a cup and pour boiling water over it. Preferably keep it over the www.mkgandhi.org Page 240 Satyagraha in South Africa fire for a minute, and add milk and sugar to taste, but it can be taken without them also’ – from the author’s Gujarati booklet on health, Chapter V. Indian Opinion, XI-10, March 8, 1913. – V.G.D. 36.
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