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| Friday, 11 June 2004 |
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Useful book for Ayurveda, Sidda and Unani practitioners The Science of Herbal Drugs
Ayurveda, Sidda and Unani practitioners are in water tight compartments. We only deal with plants, metallic and animal preparations. When I read this book I find she has brought in that aspect of collaboration that is necessary if the medieval medicine in Sri Lanka is to forge ahead. As long as they are in three different compartments they do not develop. They have to get together, get the best of all three, forge ahead as indigenous medicine system in Sri Lanka. This book deals with Ayurvedic Unani and Siddha aspects. In addition it deals with the scientific aspect which is very important. One problem why we have not developed this field is that we have not brought in science and technology and we are still in the old age 3000 years ago. Modern medicine has developed with science and technology and that is why there is such a difference between the modern medicine and the indigenous medicine. So I hope that she is giving a start to a process that will eventually be very useful not only to Sri Lanka but to the world because there is a resurgence of interest in the world about indigenous systems of medicine. We have a system that is old and time tested. It would not be destroyed by colonial imperialism. It has stood the test of time and it is time that we incorporate science into this process. The author is a Sidda practitioner. She has done her MD at MGR Institute which is a very distinguished and recognized college in Chennai. She deals with pharmacology, chemistry, and Botany. It is a combination of all these sciences that she has tried to put into a small book. There are books on all these subject areas pertaining to plants. But she has done a very efficient job of giving the basics. She has not gone into the depth of things. Ayurveda or Sidda students must know the basics because they are confined to the class room. If they know basics of these sciences that can enrich the science of Ayurveda. She has dealt with the basics of pharmacolistic, the basics of pharmacology, chemistry and Botany. There was a time when western medical practitioners laughed at "pattus". Now they have developed what are called "transdermes" patches. So the Ayurveda with the incorporation of science and technology is coming back in the form of modern medicine because drugs are the tools that are used in medicine. The theories are the same. The tools must change with time. The medicinal plants used in Ayurveda and Sidda are mostly in the dried form and for sale in various places. It is very difficult to identify the genuineness because it has become a commercial activity and people adulterate the authentic drugs. As a result when you prepare a dosage from an adulterated drug the efficacy is much low. She has pointed out that the adulteration and the quality requirements of plants is something that the students should know. It is only by scientific methods that you can identify the purity of a medicinal plant. Otherwise there is a lot of adulteration. Even if you take bee honey there is lot of adulteration. So these are things that had to come into the Ayurvedic and the Unani/Siddha set up. There are binominal names of medicinal plants which can be recognized by anybody in the world. When you teach students you always restrict yourself to the Sanskrit, Tamil or the Sinhala name so the students do not get the idea that they have international names. She has also gone into the formulation aspect of drugs. In the formulation you get what is called the principal active ingredient. If you want to formulate a tablet you need - you have paracetamol, but in the tablet you get there is only about 15 per cent of paracetamol. The other parts are called 'excipient' which are needed to form the tablet or what we call pharmaceutical aids. She has a chapter on pharmaceutical aid which also gives introduction to this field with the Siddha and the Ayurvedic set up. This is not only useful to Siddha people, this is useful to Ayurvedica people as well and to anyone in the world, because they will get some basic know-how on the totality of plants used. Otherwise we used to do only parts of this in various ways. A monograph of a plant is something written on a plant which will give various descriptions of the plant - the way of identifying the plant, the place where the plants can be found, the effects of the plant, the chemical composition of the plant. That is called the monograph on a medicinal plant. She has done 23 of them. Ayurveda uses about 350 indigenous plants and if you include them there is not much of scope for future writing on this subject and also bringing in the aspect of what has been done in the world about these plants. This is another aspect that only scientists were looking it. If you want to look at "Gotukola", we go to the internet, we go through books and find out what work has been done in the other countries. She has one chapter on the scientific research done on these plants in other countries. Her book has widened the horizon for those getting into this field. Prof. Tuley de Silva ***************** Focus on a difficult subject Understanding Human Behaviour Human behaviour is something which nobody recognizes as a subject but it is always there. Everybody is making use of it. If you go to the business world today the body language and the handwriting, the way you hold the paper, the way you keep the legs, everything is assessed, because in the interviews those are very very important. That is how you assess a person, how you will be able to respond towards the institute in the future. As a doctor we have come across human behaviour more than anybody else. Dr. Vasanthy has tried to elaborate mostly on self-conscience. This is something which is very difficult to understand. If you do not have a self, you have no body, you have no happiness. That is the crux of the matter and understanding of human life. Human behaviour is a very complicated subject and Dr. Vasanthy has tried to go into the depth of it. She goes into the early development of childhood and the mind. This is something which is very important because it is during the first three years of the life of a person that his character is completely moulded. We are bothered about somebody else's rights, a grown up's rights, but you are forgetting about our future generation. What happens is that we will go out of this stage. The whole world is a stage. So we will go out of the stage leaving the people we have neglected. As a doctor you may not be worried about the economy or other issues. But Dr. Vasanthy appears to be worried about the behaviour of the next generation. All of us have different needs - physical and economic. We do not look at the other man's need. We look at only our needs. It is very important to be aware of the other person's need also. Dr. Vasanthy has tried in several chapters to give this message to others. In one of her chapters she says changes can be made. She comes up with a vocabulary of feelings. I have never come across that before in a book - in alphabetical order. Here the feelings are put in order. I did not know that we have so many feelings. That is something which most of the others do not do. That itself gives a message. Human beings are beautiful and they have positive sides also. Perhaps the positive should be more polished and shown to the others. The negative should be suppressed and pushed underneath, not allowed to come out. Perhaps you can write another book about it - positive sides of it. We need a change for good. - Dr. Yasantha Ariyaratne |
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Produced by Lake House |
This is the first time that a Sri Lankan has endeavoured to write a
book on this subject in English. There are many books that have been
written in Sinhala or in Tamil. That void has been filled by Dr. Vasanthy
by writing this book.
