Health the traditional way

By Surya Vishwa

In this world the search for healing another person through diverse medicinal traditions began as a holistic mission of kindness and empathy. This holds true for the Greek physician Hippocrates as well, the ancient father of modern medicine who focused on a plethora of ways to heal human beings and considered it a high moral duty to do so. 

Among the world renowned medical paths today Allopathy, Ayurveda and Homeopathy are alongside other treatment systems unique to different countries and communities of the world. For example the ancient civilisations such as the Native Americans and Africans have their own ways of treating both mental and physical ailments. 

In Sri Lanka we have the unique Paramparika Sinhala Wedakama (Deshiya Chikitsa) which although considered to be akin to Indian Ayurveda, predates it, having both differences and similarities with Ayurveda and being a medical system that stands on its own as a treatment method of the Sinhalese people and once the main medical science of the land of Sinhale (Sri Lanka). The word Paramparika means it is learnt from generation to generation although almost all of the physicians today have certified qualifications from government recognised Ayurveda colleges as well. 

Parallel, Sri Lanka is also fortunate to have Siddha and Unani as traditional medical systems practiced by the Lankan Tamils and Muslims respectively and many a historical document will show that the ancient Sinhala monarchs of Lanka supported the flourishing of all these medical systems and that representatives of these medical sciences were present in the palaces.

Today as part of a continuing series to educate the public on national self-sufficiency in combating diverse global viruses and the general health sustainability, we feature medical practitioners in the Sinhala two Wedakam tradition affiliated to the only Sinhala Wedakam hospital, the Lak Suwa Sahana Maha Weda Gedera in Kelaniya to emerge during the COVID virus time. The physicians at this hospital cured COVID patients as young as one year and old as 96 years, without the use of oxygen. The hospital was started by the Sinhala Weda Uruma Baraya under the leadership of Eng. Harsha Suriyarachchi and currently has around 40 traditional physicians treating almost every ailment including eye treatment and snake bites.

Below is the quote from the Sinhala Wedakam medical practitioner Kalutharage Sampath, who, alongside other physicians who managed similar results on diverse COVID patients, cured within few days, the one and a half year old child and several patients between ages of 80 and 97 who were admitted to the above hospital seriously afflicted with the COVID virus. The Western medical hospitals had cited these patients as high risk and therefore difficult to ensure a restoration of health.

“The use of the term medicinal drugs is today synonymous with the current Western medicinal science and the Allopathy medical industry that is made dominant in the world. However, for countries such as Sri Lanka which survived for thousands of years with our medical science, we have to re-learn how we interpret the word medicinal drug or ‘aushada.’ The gross fear we have today of medical drug shortage would not be there if we understood that the word ‘aushada’ is a core word used in Paramparika Sinhala Wedakama and that in our system, the medical expert creates and takes responsibility for the drug given. Depending on the import of drugs was never the practice of this ancient medical science which is passed down from generation to generation,” says Kalutharage Sampath. 

“If we are to sincerely benefit from the unimaginably vast health tourism revival, then we have to first start benefiting ourselves from our inherited national traditional medical expertise and find ways to educate people on it, as the years of colonialism and neo liberalism have wiped it out from our minds,” he says. Kalutharage Sampath is an Ayurveda Shasthri qualified traditional physician who has received training from the Malawena Weda Parampara based college in Beruwela, having an inherited lineage in traditional medicine, apprenticed under a well-known physician of the area, Piyasena Edirimanne and practicing independently for the past 15 years.

Paramparika Wedakam medical practitioner, Deshiya Waidya Dulari Mataraarahchci currently serves as the hospital director of the Lak Suwa Sahana Maha Weda Gedera in Kelaniya. She has nearly 35 years’ experience in Swaranga (treatment of the whole physique) while specialising in the Kadum Bindung (fractures in bones and joints). Speaking of the hospital she states that it has a panel of 38 physicians who serve both visiting and in-house patients. Collectively the hospital has a representation of over 65 traditional lineages of Sinhala Wedakam physicians which is by itself unique, says Waidya Mataraarahchi. 

She emphasises that the whole nation should educate itself that allowing people to die of dengue and influenza is a crime when the traditional medical system of Sinhala Wedakama easily cures it. 

“Why are we not using our national medical heritage when there is a time of foreign currency shortage and we are getting into more debt to keep our people healthy?” she queries. 

She echoes the call of traditional physicians of the ancient Sinhala Wedakam medical science for policymakers to realise the gravity of the continued ignorance pertaining to the financial and health cost of not having a national system of benefitting from the physicians whose service to the nation goes back to the times of the kings of Lanka. 

Mataraarachchi is a Shasthri qualified traditional physician who has received training from the Malawena Weda Parampara based college in Beruwala and extensively trained from childhood from her father’s side on treating bone fractures.

“The extent of the knowledge of the Sinhala wedakam medical heritage is unbelievable. In the treatment of bone breakages there is a treatment known as the ‘Batha Ithirena Hangdiya’ in which the treatment is fully carried out with visible results within the time that it takes for a pot of rice to fully boil. 

She explains that there are treatments that can permanently heal (nittawata suwa kereema) any disease from cancer to heart ailments and including patients who have had bypass.

“What possibly is required is respect for this national heritage medical system of Sri Lanka because as we know the mind plays a key role in healing or making a person ill,” she says. 

Explaining one difference between Sinhala Wedakama and Ayurveda, she says that Sinhala Wedakama was influenced by the advent of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and that the use of animal based products in Ayurveda was more and more replaced by other alternatives in nature, especially plant based products.