Asthma patients wheeze to Indian city for live
fish cure
ABC ONLINE 9/6/2002
Half a million asthma patients have descended on the southern Indian city of Hyderabad in
the hope of a miracle cure offered every year to anyone willing to swallow a live fish
stuffed with medicines.
The city's Bathini Goud family distributes the famed medicine free to anyone who takes the
trouble of coming here on an auspicious day which falls only once a year, coinciding with
the arrival of monsoon rains.
The yellow-paste medicine, the ingredients of which are kept secret by the family, is
stuffed into the mouth of a two-to-three-inch long "murrel" fish and then
dropped down the gullet of the patient.
The family members say the fish's movement clears the phlegm in the patient's windpipe as
it makes its way down to the stomach, where the medicine is digested.
"To be effective, this cure must be taken at least three years in a row along with a
special diet for 45 days," family patriarch Bathini Viswanath Goud told the AFP news
agency.
"If all these instructions are carefully followed, we can guarantee a 100 per cent
cure for any patient, no matter how bad the asthma."
The "magic formula" was gifted to an ancestor by a Hindu saint in return for his
generous hospitality, family members claim.
"We use water from a specially blessed well in our ancestral home to make the
medicine. The rest of the ingredients are kept secret because we do not want anyone to
start commercializing this remedy," says Goud.
He claims the ancestor who was given the formula was warned that the remedy would lose its
potency if anybody tried to exploit it commercially.
Hundreds of thousands of people, who vouch for its efficacy, gather here from all over
India for their dose, brushing aside the skepticism of modern doctors.
"I was once a chronic asthma patient and couldn't survive without steroids. Then,
someone told me about this treatment. I have been coming here for six years now and I
don't need any other medication," said Partho Dey from the eastern city of Calcutta.
People brave rain, shine and even camp overnight to get a place ahead in the queue which
grows longer by the year.
"It has been a long journey and a long wait, but in the end it is a small price to
pay for a lifetime of relief from a chronic illness," says asthma patient Manisha
Gulati who is here on her second trip from the western metropolis of Bombay.
The faith is so strong that even vegetarians suppress their revulsion to go in for the
one-shot cure.
"It is a real ordeal. Sometimes I get so tense thinking about it that I can not sleep
at night," says Sushila Nair from the southern city of Madras.
Nair's chemist husband Mohan is not sure how the medicine works, but says he has come here
eight years in a row because it is effective.
"As a scientifically qualified person I cannot explain this phenomenon. All I know is
that it has worked wonders for my wife so I keep bringing her back here every year,"
Mohan said.
Medical professionals rubbish the talk of magic in the medicine.
"I think it works more as a psychological than a clinical cure. What we are seeing is
definitely no miracle," says Dr A V S Reddy, a specialist in respiratory medicine in
Hyderabad Care Hospital.
"Frankly I have rarely met any patient who has been totally cured by this fish
medicine. What is more, there is no clinical evidence to prove this remedy actually
works," he added.
For the believers, the annual journey and the wait is worth the pain.
The state of Andhra Pradesh has introduced special train, bus and air services for the
patients pouring in every year seeing the remedy's popularity.END OF REPORT
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