Workshop on Astrology as tool for disease prediction

Emphasis on learning astrology by a healer is stressed in Traditional Tamil Siddha medicine. The same principle is emphasized by the father of modern medicine Hippocrates

“The man who is ignorant of the science of astrology, deserves the name of fool rather than that of physician.”- Hippocrates

CTMR organized a workshop on 17th Oct, 2010 at its office at Adambakkam, Chennai on ‘Influence of astrology in Health and Disease’.

Dr.T.Thirunarayanan, Secretary CTMR explained the objective of the workshop as to explore and understand the influence of astrology in health and disease in proper perspective as part of the Validation process of Local Health Traditions project being carrying out with support from AYUSH. He mentioned Astrology as a tool in predicting disease and treatment is used by Traditional healers in Tamilnadu.

Dr.S.Ganesan, a Chemical technologist and a researcher on astrology with specific interest in health, delivered the plenary lecture and explained the strong scientific rationale of how this traditional science plays a key role in determining and projecting disease diagnosis and treatment. He detailed the concepts of ‘Kalapurusha’, how the Zodiac signs were classified into 12 and the degree of influence of each sign, the house of Grahas, bhavas etc., The significance of planetary positions in different disease conditions and determining the appropriate treatment, surgical intervention or medical remedy would help the individual was explained. Case presentation on the planetary positions in terminally ill patients and how the time of death would be predicted was explained by him. Similarly how a doctor becomes a specialist in a given field would also be determined by the planetary positions. He concluded by stating that astrology is not a science exclusive to India and different cultures have used it for disease prediction and treatment and astrology would be used to prevent diseases by taking the warnings and changing lifestyle at least to prevent complications.

Following the invited lecture, Dr.R.Manikandan, a post graduate Siddha Physician and hailing from the family of Traditional healer who practices astrology as well made case presentations of positions of different planets in Congestive Cardiac failure, Renal disease, Diabetes and Cancer. He stressed once the planetary position changes for the good the prognosis is also good and disease complications will slowly disappear.

Dr.D.Narasimhan from Centre of floristic study, Madras Christian College and a renowned ethnobotonist highlighted the research being carried out on epigenetic on similar lines and suggested CTMR to document more case history and also suggested to develop simple software for clinical applications.

Dr.S.Rajkumar of CTMR thanked the participants for their interaction and promised to take this forward as a research project in the near future.