The Gazetteers Department

Public health as a social phenomenon has attracted government attention only very recently. Limited as it was in the early stages to urban areas, now the facilities cover the rural areas as well. In the ex-Hyderabad State, public health was always the subject of government consideration and there was a full-fledged Medical and Public Health Department to look after the problems affecting public health. The number of hospitals and dispensaries rose considerably between 1911 and 1941. Protected water-supply and drainage schemes were provided in important cities and sanitary wells constructed in other areas. In spite of the general improvement in medical and public health facilities in the state as such, Bhir district did not figure prominently probably due to lack of suitable means of communications such as roads, rail, etc. It is only recently that dispensaries and health centres have been opened in the district under the various state schemes and conditions are bound to improve gradually.

In former times various illnesses and infirmities such as insanity, blindness, deafness, etc., were commonly attributed to the work of a particular demon or wrath of a godling. Factors such as physiological or mental disorder were hardly thought of. In such circumstances appeasement by special offerings was considered as an effective remedy. Such a belief often made people resort to magic and such magical practices as bhanamati, saifi amal or alvi amal. In most cases the treatment which the patients were subjected to at the hands of devil dancers and exorcists was so severe that the afflicted sometimes died. Such ideas and beliefs though on the wane are still to be met with in rural areas.

The vaidyas, vaidus and hakims constituted the second line of treatment. Their knowledge of medicine was chiefly based on the indigenous system of medicine and they made good use of local medicinal plants and herbs. The vaidus moved from place to place especially in rural areas treating the people. In the absence of specialised veterinary doctors, they occasionally treated the live-stock as well. Maternity and child care was in the hands of the elderly ladies in the joint families, the modern maternity facilities being absent.

Majority of the population regarded the propagation of male off-spring as a religious duty and the reproach of barrenness was considered as a terrible punishment for crimes committed in a former birth. A move in the direction of birth control was therefore, unconceived of.

It was only with the spread of Western education that conservatism and orthodoxy in the sphere of medical treatment and diagnosis were replaced by reason and rational outlook. Hospitals and dispensaries well equipped with modern apparatus are making appearance and doctors trained in the modern system of medicine are fast replacing the men practising the traditional system of medicine.