India’s Fish Medicine | God's World News

India’s Fish Medicine

06/12/2017
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    India’s Fish Medicine

Some folks in India have an treatment for asthma: swallowing live fish. But the unusual “medicine” not only smells bad, it’s also a bit fishy.

Each year the Bathini Goud Brothers of Hyderabad, India, administer fish prasadam, or offering, to thousands of willing patients.

The Goud family has been making and dispensing their fish remedy free of cost for over 160 years. The remedy consists of a yellow herbal paste stuffed inside a live fish. According to the family, the prasadam must be taken for three years straight in order to work.

The fish swallowing takes place on an exhibition grounds at the start of monsoon season. Thousands come from all around India to crowd under an open-air structure. They stand in long lines holding tiny water-filled bags, each with a murrel fish—a sardine—swimming inside.

Workers stuff the Bathini Goud Brothers’ paste into each fish. Then a worker pushes the loaded fish down a patient’s throat. (Yuck!) Most patients open their mouths willingly, then gulp the fish down. Sometimes they need a little help. Workers must often hold patients’ jaws shut.

The Indian courts ruled that the brothers cannot call their strange treatment “medicine.” But many people believe the fish cures respiratory ailments, including asthma.

(AP Photo: An Indian woman opens her mouth to receive the fish remedy.)