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There are over 11,000 registered Siddha medical practitioners and nearly 500 licensed pharmacies. Two medical colleges in Tamil Nadu are exclusively devoted to teaching the Siddha system. There is a large number of hospitals and dispensaries, and three units of drug standardisation. In addition, there are tribal health care centres dispensing Siddha medicine. There are clinical research centres, mobile clinics. and farms to cultivate rare herbs needed by the drug manufacturers and practitioners.
A standardised formulary for 242 drug compositions that also involve about 100 species of plants was prepared even 20 years ago. The following are some species of plants used in the Siddha preparations:
Caesalpinia bonducella, Canavalia ensiformis, Cephalandra indica, Clerodendrum phlomides, Crinum asiaticum, Cucumis colocynthis, Cucurbita maxima, Cycas circinalis, Daemia extensa, Dolichos albus, Fumaria parviflora, Gymnema sylvestre, Lageneria vulgaris, Mimusops kauki, Momordica charantia, Mukia scabrella, Passiflora foetida, Periploca indica, Ruta graveolens, Solanum trilobatum, Sphaeranthus indicus, Vigna catjang, Vitex negundo, etc.
The Indian Medicine Practitioners’ Co-operative Society, set up about 1945 in Chennai, has been engaged in the preparation and marketing of over 200 Siddha formulations. It had also published a Formulary of Siddha medicines (Anonymous, 1989). The Central Government’s Siddha Research unit in Chennai has been conducting clinical trials of Siddha compositions.
All this certainly goes a very long way in support of the Siddha system. Nevertheless, the future of the system lies more in the verifiable capabilities of the drugs to cure the ailments against which they were formulated. For the present, the system is firmly established as an integral part of health care in Tamil Nadu.
REFERENCES
Anonymous. 1989.
Formulary of Siddha medicines. The Indian Medical Practitioners Co-operative Pharmacy and Stores, Ltd., Chennai.Kurup, P.N.V. 1983. Ayurveda. In Traditional medicine and health care coverage. (eds.) Bannerman, R.H., Burton, J. and Wen-Chieh, C. WHO, Geneva. pp 50-58.
Sathyanarayana Bhat and Kameswara Rao, C. 1993a. Rasa vaidya (in Kannada). Directorate of Indian Systems of medicine and Homoeopathy, Government of Karnataka. pp 32.
Sathyanarayana Bhat and Kameswara rao, C. 1993b. Siddha vaidya parichaya (in Kannada). Directorate of Indian Systems of Medicine and Homoeopathy, Government of Karnataka. pp 17.
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