then that forbidden item becomes lawful on two conditions:

First: his need cannot be met by anything else.

Second: the item must in fact remove the necessity.

With these two qualifications it becomes clear that there is never a genuine need for a prohibited medicine; even if such a remedy exists, because it is unlawful there is no necessity to use it.

Suppose someone says, “I want to drink blood for treatment,” just as some people claim that drinking the blood of a wolf cures certain illnesses. We reply: this is not permissible.

1. A person may well be healed without resorting to what is forbidden—whether by Allah’s grace, through supplication, by Qurʾanic recitation, or by another lawful medicine.
2. Nor is it certain that taking the medicine will bring a cure; how many people undergo treatment and are not healed? This is unlike the case of one who is starving and has nothing but carrion, pork, or donkey meat; in such a situation it is permissible to eat, because we know that his necessity will definitely be relieved by it, whereas medicine offers no such certainty.

As for his ﷺ statement, “When I command you to do something, do of it what you are able,” it corresponds to Allah’s words, “So fear Allah as much as you are able” (al-Taghābun 64:16). In other words, when we are commanded to do something, we carry out of it whatever we can, and what we are unable to do is waived. For example, we have been ordered to perform the obligatory prayer standing; if we cannot, we pray sitting, and if we still cannot, then on our side—just as the Prophet ﷺ said to ʿImrān b. Ḥuṣayn, “Pray…"