To Respect Village Health Practices

 

When in my childhood I used to see poor people with a mark of branding on their arms as part of a treatment I used to consider it their 'superstition' and 'illiteracy'. Till I started studying Ayurveda and understood that the process figures in the ayurvedic treatment also in one or two conditions. That validated it for me.

Maybe if some peer reviewed academic journal carried it, it would validate it for some others.

Why do we dismiss the practices and wisdom of common people, and look elsewhere for validation of that. Why do we dismiss the common people ?

 

Comments

• Sailesh Bhupalam

  That people have traditional wisdom is uncontested. That they have the ability to differentiate superstition from knowledge is.

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• Sailesh Bhupalam

  There are too many cases of people dying in villages because of fake ayurvedic doctors. The ones who have real knowledge of healing usually leave the villages.

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  Aparna Krishnan

  There is much ayurvedic healing alive in villages today. We have bone setters, we have Kallur where vayu diseases are treated, we have the bobammas of Ravanaiahgaripelle where child diseases are treated. These all need to be protected.

  

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  Aparna Krishnan

  The vastness of these practices is not covered by a TRP media, only ther perversions are - and a sensation hungry public buys the media story and rubbishes village wisdom and common sense, I am sorry to say.

  

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• Sailesh Bhupalam

  I don't think i was able to make my point clear. I have an extended family member who is permanently handicapped because a natu vaidyam guy didn't learn his craft well. Who certifies them? how do you recognize the real from the fake? What's wrong with institutionalizing this traditional knowledge after testing it through the scientific method? peer reviews only give credibility, there is no need for contempt towards them.

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    Aparna Krishnan

    If you do a survey of the damage cause by modern hospitals, and the damage cause by natu vaidyas, I suspect you will be surprised. The largers killer today is aiatrogenic diseases (diseases caused due to modern medical interventions). In natu vaidyas also there are odd failures, but very few in my 20 years in the village. As to 'validation', the local people validate, and they vote with their feet.

    

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    Aparna Krishnan

    And the primary thing is whether you consider local people as intelligent or as fools. So that you will need to move to a village, and live in to understand. I cannot, and will not, 'convince'. I am not their keeper. Or anyone's keeper.

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  • Sailesh Bhupalam

    Yes there are failures in modern medicine. But your rejection of the entire scientific method is baffling to me. People might vote with their feet, but that would only be after someone loses a limb or life. If there are less failures in traditional medicine, which we are not sure of( because i consider any one persons experience spatially and temporally insufficient to reach conclusions that have impact on billions of lives.) Then testing and verifying will only make it better.

    This is exactly what the educated Indian is doing but in reverse. Thinking everything from the west is good, and rejecting tradition is the modern ailment, But i see the same thing in a different colour. Rejection of everything modern for tradition. What we need is somewhere in between

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  • Sailesh Bhupalam

    Villagers may not be fools, they have survived millenia without modernism touching them. But to claim their way is superior to any other is not acceptable to me. Everybody can learn from each other. None of us are as smart as all of us.

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    Aparna Krishnan

    they never claimed that. Only the urbans have claimed that they are the smartest !

    

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• Manidhar Gudavalli

  It is not superstition. One of the reason why people dont practice is that, it leaves permanent mark on the body and painful too.

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    Aparna Krishnan

    it is part of kamala treatment in he village. apart from medicines. (Jaundice)

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    Aparna Krishnan

    Not painful, they say.

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