Improper diet produces an abnormal ('dyscrasic') composition of the blood, which in turn produces a corresponding faulty composition of every body tissue; this dietetic blood dyscrasia is the fundamental cause of essentially all disease, and correcting it through diet prevents and cures disease generally.
This is Lahmann’s central theoretical claim, stated in the title and text of his 1891 book, Die diätetische Blutentmischung (Dysämie) als Grundursache der Krankheiten. It is classified mechanism-only because it infers general disease causation and cure from a single unmeasured blood state rather than from any measured clinical endpoint, and refuted because modern medicine and nutritional science, grounded in germ theory and later in specific biochemical and nutrient mechanisms, do not recognize a single diet-driven blood dyscrasia as the cause of disease in general; local medical-historical assessment explicitly characterizes the theory as a now-outdated view (Stadtwiki Dresden, quoted in the case’s grounding log).
Appears in
Sources
- Die diätetische Blutentmischung (Dysämie) als Grundursache der Krankheiten: Ein Beitrag zur Lehre von der Krankheitsanlage und Krankheitsverhütung — Lahmann, Heinrich. Die diätetische Blutentmischung (Dysämie) als Grundursache der Krankheiten: Ein Beitrag zur Lehre von der Krankheitsanlage und Krankheitsverhütung. Stuttgart: A. Zimmer, 1891 (later editions retitled 'als Grundursache aller Krankheiten'; a 17th edition, 249pp, digitized from a Harvard University copy 19 September 2007, is catalogued on Google Books, id ipwNAAAAYAAJ).
- Heinrich Lahmann (Stadtwiki Dresden) — "Heinrich Lahmann." Stadtwiki Dresden. Page last modified 1 February 2015.
- The History of Inpatient Care in German Departments Focussing on Natural Healing — Beer AM, Uehleke B, Wiebelitz KR. The History of Inpatient Care in German Departments Focussing on Natural Healing. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 2013;2013:521879. doi:10.1155/2013/521879. PMID 23737834. PMCID PMC3667466.