Hot and Cold Dosams

The Ayurvedic or Siddha physician is concerned with the balance, stability, and compatibility of various dosas humors. The three basic humors are bile (pittam), phlegm (kapam) and wind (vayu or vata). While there is a large amount of literature on the various classificatory schemes and properties of the three dosas, I will be concerned mainly with the hot-cold aspect of these humors. In general, pittam is a hot dosam kapam is a cold dosam, and vayu could be either. Various ailments are classified as heat-generated or cold-generated depending on the type of dosam that is involved.

1. Examples of pittam generated ailments that I am aware of include boils and eruptions, gum disease, hemmorhoids, rashes, bad stomach, measles, anemia, headache and earache. Most external eruptions (especially those with puss) are generated by an overactive pittam.

2. Examples of kapam caused ailments include common cold (with a runny nose), coughing, general body aches, stiffness. In the absence of other symptoms, conditions like general body aches are presumed to be created by an excess of kapam. I have often heard Ayurvedic physicians from my own family link the presence of excess kapam to exposure to cold and damp conditions (such as repeatedly going out at dawn in the presence of excessive dew (pani)

3. {Vayu caused illness include indigestion, gas, and certain kinds of diarrhea. Vayu is extremely interesting because its hot or cold nature seems the most context sensitive. The exact nature of a vayu-generated ailment and hence its subsequent cure seems to rely on a bewildering array of iconically inter-related variables. I outline some of these below:
   1. The direction from which the wind is blowing.
   2. The season.
   3. The relevant time of day.
   4. The location /spatial-arrangement of the subject/patient's home.
   5. The inherent kunam of the patient.
   6. The history of pittam-generated or kapam-generated illnesses.
   7. The diet of the patient.
   8. The age of the patient.

In general, the treatment for an ailment depends on an iconic relationship between the drug and the patient's body, the humor of the drug substance and the generative factor (heat or cold related) of the illness, or the combination of other heat and cold creating factors (for instance the type of place/region, the patient's kunam, and the type of the pathogen). Note that this is in sharp contrast to the western tradition that relies exclusively on cause-effect representations (homeopathic versus allopathic).