The Birth of a New Scientific Truth in Medicine

Water: For Health, for Healing, for Life: You're Not Sick, You're Thirsty!
by F. Batmanghelidj, M.D.

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History tells us that every so often, through basic discoveries of the applied techniques of nature, important leaps of progress have become possible. Humankind, because of these fortuitous happen-stances and flashes of insight, has unraveled many of the secrets employed in its creation.

One such happenstance seems to have revealed itself in 1979. I had become a political prisoner of Islamic revolutionaries and was being held in the Iranian prison of Evin. While facing the possibility of execution, I discovered one late night that two glasses of water could relieve even the severest abdominal pain associated with peptic ulcer disease.

A prisoner needed medication for his excruciating ulcer pain which had him doubled up and unable to walk by himself. Two friends were supporting him. The guards had not responded to his repeated pleas to be taken to the prison hospital. It was after eleven at night when he was brought to me. I was a prisoner myself and had no medication to give the man, who was truly in agony. I explained to him that I had no medicine to give him. His face showed even more pain than before. Instead of medication, I gave him two glasses of water. Within minutes, his ulcer pain became less severe. In eight minutes, it disappeared completely. This confirmed for me the abdominal-pain-relieving effect of water in a “disease” condition (I had relieved my own abdominal pain with water during a period of solitary confinement when I refused food for several days). I encouraged one after another of the inmates who had this same classic pain to take water in place of medications that were sometimes available.

During the ensuing two and a half years of my imprisonment, I successfully treated well over three thousand stress-induced peptic ulcer disease cases with tap water only. It became obvious to me that these people were really and only thirsty. They were presenting their dehydration in the form of a painful crisis situation that we in the medical profession had labeled a “disease” condition. As a last defense at my trial-about fifteen months into my imprisonment-I presented a scientific article to be released for publication. I told the judge that even if he had me shot, to please not lose the information. “It is the greatest medical discovery in history,” I said. By then I had already treated a few hundred fellow prisoners in the confined prison block where I was housed.

The judge later came to me and said: “You have made a tremendous discovery; I wish you luck in the future.” That was the first indication that I had a future and could continue my work.

As acknowledgment of my discovery, I was not executed but given a three-year sentence. My life was spared because of what I had discovered in the prison. All my personal assets, however, were confiscated. After twenty-three months, the prison warden told me the authorities had discovered I was “not the bad person they had been led to believe,” and they were considering an early release for me. I thanked him, but said I wanted to stay on in prison a while longer. I was in the middle of clinical observations on the effect of water as a treatment of various stress-induced health problems, including bleeding peptic ulcer conditions. I explained to him that as a sort of stress laboratory, Evin was unique. Needless to say, the warden was surprised. He thought he was doing me a great favor by wanting to release me before the end of my sentence. He agreed that my work was important, however, and that I should be given the opportunity to complete what I was doing. I had for some time believed that my coming to prison had not been a chance event. I was destined to make my discovery that the human body has sophisticated crisis calls for water when it is stressed and becomes dehydrated. I stayed in prison an additional four months and reached certain clinical conclusions that now needed scientific explanations. After two years and seven months of imprisonment, I was released with an official acclaim for my discovery.

During my prison time, I gained much new understanding about the physiological effects of water and its relationship to many disease conditions. It all started with abdominal pain. I published the first announcement of my discovery in the Iranian Medical Association Journal while I was still in prison. A translation of the article was sent to America and was eventually restructured for publication as a guest editorial in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology in June 1983.

About the Author

Dr. F. Batmanghelidj, was born in Tehran, Iran, and now lives in Falls Church, Virginia.