Traditional Livestock Healer

Name : Periya ayyavu Aperiya-ayyavu

District & State :  Madurai, Tamil Nadu

Category : Herbal products

Award :   Appreciation

Award Function :   4th National Grassroots Innovation Awards

Award Year : 2007

Innovation Description

Background

Periya Ayyavu (52) lives in Ichikular village, 25 km from Madurai. Situated near a small hillock, having fields of mango, paddy and tamarind, the village is surrounded by dry deciduous forests. He lives in a small, thatched house along with his four sons and five daughters.Periya Ayyavu’s family has been practicing herbal animal healing for the past five generations though for livelihood they depend exclusively on agriculture, which provides them meager income to survive. They command a lot of respect among the people of the surrounding villages for their contribution to the society. Still, lack of financial benefits in their traditional work has prevented his sons to take up their family tradition except his younger son who has been showing some interest in herbal medications.During his childhood, he used to accompany his father and grandfather when they went around the forest to collect herbs. It was here, he started familarising himself with them. Slowly he learned the practices and with age gained experience. It has been forty years since he has been administering herbal medicines to the livestock. Mostly he gives medicine for cattle and poultry and occasionally to humans also. His wife was also interested in herbal formulations and learned from him but now she is no more, she used to give herbal medicines for women related health problems.With time, he got well acquainted with different medicinal plants available in Sirumalai hills, their uses and ways for processing them. For the livestock he has many practices for example for the control of “Sappai” disease (Black Quarter), bloat, for poisonous bites, Beetle bites, swelling in the knee joints (Molichoolai/Vatham/ Muttiveekkam), for Mastitis, to increase milk production, Dysentery and for Intestinal worms. For treating the knee joint pain in the animals Periya Ayyavu uses the decoction of the leaves of “virali”, “aathi”, “peramutti” , bark of “marutham”, bark of jamun, leaves of “neerkadambu” and applies it to the affected area and ties cloth over it. He opines that the medicine practitioners should impart their duties only with a service attitude and not for commercial benefits i.e., they should not take any money in return of their treatment and he himself is strictly adhering to it apart from influencing others to do the same.Unlike other herbal healers he has documented almost all his medicinal practices in a notebook and wishes to get it published for which he needs assistance. Ignorant about the future he is happy the way he is presently and mentions that he will treat the animals and humans without any charge for the rest of his life.

http://nif.org.in/innovation/Traditional_Livestock_Healer/380

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