Chennai: (The Hindu March 20)
Says it had faded away from public domain due to systematic campaign during colonial rule
In a judgement that has come as a boost to practitioners
and supporters of native medical practices, the Madras High Court has
expressed concern over fading away of indigenous systems of medicine
from public domain due to a systematic campaign conducted during the
colonial rule in order to promote allopathic treatment.
Disposing
of a batch of writ petitions relating to Government Siddha Medical
College in Tirunelveli district as well as Government Ayurveda Medical
College in Kanyakumari district, Justice V. Ramasubramanian traced
various historical instances which according to him, if ignored, “would
put the indigenous systems of medicine in the Intensive Care Unit and
that too in an allopathic hospital.”
According to
him, the history of Ayurveda and Siddha dated back to several centuries.
Literally meaning the ‘science of life,' Ayurveda was often used in a
narrow sense as a ‘system of medicine,' a connotation which considerably
diluted and distorted its real scope and objective. Health, according
to Ayurveda, was not only freedom from disease.
Susruta,
one of the great early Ayurveda practitioners, had termed it to be a
state of the individual where, in addition to harmony among the
functional units (dosas), digestive and metabolic mechanisms (agnis),
structural elements (dhatus), and waste products (malas), a person
should also be in an excellent state (prasanna) of the spirit (atman),
senses (indriyas), and mind (manas).
The
Encyclopaedia Britannica states that Ayurvedic practitioners work in
rural areas, providing healthcare to at least five million people in the
country. It also points out that the golden age of Indian medicine from
800 B.C. to 1000 A.D. was marked by the production of medical treatises
known as ‘caraka-samhita' and ‘susruta-samhita.'
In
surgery, ancient Hindu medicine reached its zenith. Operations performed
by Hindu surgeons included excision of tumours, incision and draining
of abscesses, punctures to release fluid in the abdomen, extraction of
foreign bodies, repair of anal fistulas, splinting of fractures,
amputations, caesarean sections, and stitching of wounds.
A
broad array of surgical instruments was used. According to Susruta, a
surgeon should be equipped with 20 sharp and 101 blunt instruments of
various descriptions. The instruments were largely of steel. Alcohol
seemed to have been used as a narcotic during operations and bleeding
was stopped with hot oils and tar. Hindu surgeons also operated on
cataracts by couching or displacing the lens to improve vision.
The
judge also pointed out that a book titled ‘Man and Medicine - A
History' authored by Farokh Erach Udwadia, an Emeritus Professor of
Medicine (Allopathy), talked about an interesting event about the
documented performance of rhinoplasty (for which Susruta was famous)
witnessed and recorded in 1793 in Pune.
A Parsee
gentleman by name Cowasjee who was serving the English Army at the time
of the Mysore War in 1792 was captured by soldiers of Tipu Sultan, the
erstwhile ruler of Mysore. His nose and hand was cut off. He and three
of his friends, who had met with the same fate, consulted an individual
who was only a bricklayer by profession.
The
bricklayer performed a surgery, which was witnessed by Thomas Cruso and
James Findlay, Senior British Surgeons in Bombay Presidency. They
described and drew the skin graft procedure and the same was published
in the Madras Gazette. It was later reproduced in the October 1794 issue
of the Gentleman's Magazine of London.
The
occurrence caught the attention of J.C. Carpue, a 30-year-old surgeon in
London. He successfully used the same skin graft procedure for nose
repair on a patient in 1814. He reported his successful results in 1816,
introducing the ‘Hindu Surgical Technique' and with it ‘The Indian
Nose' to the West. Even Susruta had recommended the use of facial skin
flap for repair of cleft lip.
Similarly, the Siddha
System of Medicine also has a history which dates back to several
centuries. Traditionally believed to have been developed by 18 Siddhas
including Sage Agasthiya, the Siddha System had its own merits. “But
unfortunately, due to lack of patronage for the culture of the ancient
times, this system of Medicine also suffered to a great extent under the
colonial rule,” the judge said.
He recalled that
C.N. Deivanayagam, an allopathy doctor and a Fellow of the Royal College
of Physicians (Edinburgh), who retired as Superintendent of Government
Hospital of Thoracic Medicine, Tambaram, presented a paper titled
‘HIV/AIDS and Siddha System of Healthcare - an experience of 13 years'
highlighting the effectiveness of Siddha formulations.
According
to the doctor, there was an exponential increase in the number of HIV
sufferers seeking care and treatment ever since the Tambaram Government
Hospital adopted an open door policy for HIV/AIDS in 1992. While there
were only two patients in 1993, the number rose up to 365 in 1996 and
6,791 in the year 2000.
ARV Drugs could not be
provided by the Government to all the patients, hence the hospital
invited 90 Siddha physicians to a seminar to identify suitable Siddha
formulations to combat the killer disease. All of them agreed on
formulations containing processed Sulphur and processed Mercury to fight
the disease. As a consequence, a formulation known as RAN was born as
the child of Tambaram.
The acronym RAN stood for
Rasagandhi Mezhugu, Amukkira Chooranam and Nellikkai Ilagam. It had
become an immunogenic and adaptogenic drug. The medical practitioners
demonstrated through laboratory evidence that there was clinical
improvement in more than 60 per cent of the patients who received either
RAN alone or in combination with other drugs.
Further,
in 1995, Padma Srinivasan, a Senior Research Officer at the Indian
Institute of Health Management Research had presented a paper in the
World Health Forum pointing out that the traditional systems of medicine
were gradually replaced by modern medicine during the 19 and firth half
of 20 century under the influence of the British Raj.
The,
provincial Governments and popular leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi made
various efforts to reverse this trend. But unfortunately, the country's
first National Healthcare Policy outlined in 1946 by Bhore Committee
completely ignored the traditional practices. Subsequent Committees
attempted to correct this error but in vain.
In 1961,
the Mudaliar Committee made strong recommendations for integrating
modern medicine with the traditional medicine. But by that time, the
dominance of modern medicine had become irreversible. “At present, most
of the larger institutions promoting indigenous systems of medicine are
controlled and financed by the State Governments, and little interest
shown at the central level.
“This is probably
because the Central Government depends on support for healthcare from
international organisations backed by rich Western countries,” the
author had concluded.
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