Hyderabad: Thousands of asthma patients lined up yesterday to swallow tiny fish stuffed with a medicinal paste in the hope that the "wonder drug" would give them relief from nagging respiratory problems.
An estimated 50,000 people have been administered the "fish prasadam" (offering) since Friday night at the Exhibition Grounds and hundreds more were waiting to receive it.
The distribution of the medicine, which began at 10pm on Friday, was expected to continue till 10pm yesterday.
Notwithstanding the campaign by rationalists and physicians against the "unscientific" drug, thousands from across the country and some from abroad lined up to take the fish medicine, distributed by the Bathini Goud family free of cost on the Mrigasira Karti day of the Hindu calendar.
160-year tradition
The medicine, which the family has been distributing for 160 years, consists of a yellow herbal paste, the ingredients of which have remained a family secret. The paste is first stuffed into a live three centimetre-long "murrel" fish that is then slipped through the throat of the patient.
If taken for three successive years, the medicine is believed to cure asthma.
About 300 members of Bathini Goud family and volunteers administered the medicine at 24 counters.
Though the number of patients coming for the event has drastically come down over the last five years due to the controversy surrounding the ingredients of the herbal paste, thousands still throng to receive it out of faith.
It is for this reason that the Goud family renamed the event as "fish prasadam" three years ago in the face of the controversy.
The family claims that in 1845 a holy man passed on the formula for the miracle medicine to their great-great-grandfather Veranna Goud, if he promised to distribute it free of cost and never reveal the ingredients to others.
The family has consistently turned down demands from rationalists and physicians to reveal the ingredients, claiming the medicine would lose its efficacy.
For many the controversy has no relevance.
