Pinotherapy is an obsolete term for treating illness by withholding the nutrients blamed for it — essentially therapeutic fasting or severe dietary restriction as medicine. The idea has ancient roots, from Hippocratic fasting prescriptions to religious fasts, and it periodically resurfaces in alternative medicine as “starving” tumours or detoxification. Modern medicine recognises narrow legitimate applications: short preoperative fasting, very-low-calorie diets under supervision for rapid weight loss before surgery, and ketogenic diets for epilepsy. But as a general therapeutic principle, deliberate nutrient deprivation is dangerous, causing muscle wasting, immune collapse, and micronutrient deficiency that worsen most diseases. The term’s disappearance from medical dictionaries reflects this judgement: with rare exceptions, the sick body needs nourishment, not starvation, to heal.