Mahabhutharavaghrutham may be a formidable lump of a word, but for an ayurvedic formulation reputed to check epilepsy, diction is the least of a patient's concerns. More disconcerting are the ingredients that go into the drug: urine of cow, buffalo, elephant, horse, two varieties of goats, camel and, incredibly, donkey. The listing even shocked the most celebrated practitioner of urine therapy, former prime minister Morarji Desai, but it hasn't stopped hordes of invalids from converging on the Arya Vaidya Sala (avs).

Ensconced in Kottakkal town of Malappuram district in Kerala, the avs has been dispensing with miraculous ayurvedic cures for a hundred years now. For as long they have trickled in, the suffering legions, seeking to repress insuperable ailments like cancer and pervasive ones like cardiac trouble and spondylosis; there are others lured by the "rejuvenation and age-arresting" therapies. Whatever the compulsion, the avs draws multitudes. So does Pannempally Krishna Warrier.

Years may rest heavy on this 81-year-old but the title of demigod clings snugly to him. He is the man credited with infusing a fresh lease of life not only in the institute but among the sick who travel the world over for magic potions. Recipient of the Padma Shri, Warrier has headed the avs for 50 years and is currently its chief physician and managing trustee. Among the awards he has won are the Dhanwantari Award instituted by the Dhanwantari Foundation, Mumbai, and the first Adisamman Puraskar instituted by the Kolkata-based Academy of Ayurvedic Doctors. He has also been the president of the All India Ayurvedic Congress for the past three years. He doesn't sit on his laurels, but continues to devote eight rigorous hours to his patients every day.

LARGER THAN LIFE: Warrier at the Kottakkal drug manufacturing unit

"He's not just my doctor but guru too. He has given me a new life," says Rozina Sumer, a Canadian housewife who is undergoing treatment for schleroderma, a skin disease. G.L. Mirchandani, chairman of the India Book House (ibh), comes here every year for the oil and massage treatment that "keeps me alive". There are others-Indian and foreign politicians, artists like Mehdi Hassan and Vembatty Chinnasatyam, businessmen and filmstars like Sunil Dutt-who trust Warrier and the avs with their lives.

But Warrier is quick to credit "the hospital's traditions and its visionary founder". It's a reference to his uncle Vaidyaratnam P.S. Varrier who founded the institute in 1902. Endowed with a rare prescience, he modernised a system that was not just fiercely traditional but one that owed its strength to antiquity. In the process he also salvaged ayurveda from the decay that colonial domination had pushed it into. So Varrier employed a strategy to beat the enemy at its own game. He roped in technology to initiate the first-ever mass production and bottling of ayurvedic medicines, and innovative ways of publicity. This ensured easy availability and longer shelf-life of drugs-the reasons for the popularity of the allopathic system.

From a two-room building the avs has grown into a massive clinical and manufacturing complex with 15 branches-the latest being a 75-bed hospital and research centre in Delhi. While the 170-room hospital at Kottakkal and its branches are run by the family charitable trust, the prime source of revenue for the avs is its drug manufacturing factory at Kottakkal which produces more than 500 drugs from herbs grown in its own gardens. The seven-member trust comprises five of Warrier's relatives and two avs staff members. Even as the staff strength has shot up from 50 to 1,500, the turnover has surged from Rs 10 lakh in 1950s to Rs 80 crore today.

Notwithstanding modernisation, many drugs continue to be prepared in a fiercely traditional manner. For instance, 10 gm of abhrabhasmam, ideal for juvenile diabetes, or thangabhasmam for asthma, comprising gold powder and costing Rs 14,000 per 15 gm, takes five tedious years to prepare. To cope with tradition, says Balachandran, a doctor at the hospital, Varrier banked on good marketing. He set up a Kathakali and drama troupe, PSV Natyasanghom, and organised art festivals, besides launching a magazine and a publishing house to promote his products. It is, however, the Vaidya Sala that has become synonymous with the state's famed ayurvedic system. In fact, the boom in Kerala's tourism industry owes much to the resorts specialising in these cures: oil massages like dhara, pizhichil, njavarakizhi, and sirovasthi help cure paralysis, rheumatism, arthritis and spondylosis.

Though Warrier heads the first institution that successfully integrated ayurveda and commerce, he is not impressed by the boom. "It has spawned spurious practitioners who have given ayurveda a bad name," he says. "People with insufficient knowledge of ayurveda are running massage resorts where unsuspecting tourists end up with broken necks," he adds. Besides commercialisation, the other challenges include non-availability of herbs and the loss in quality due to environmental hazards.

That hasn't curbed Warrier's zest for progress and modernisation. For the first time in the history of the institute, he has appointed advisers to streamline and professionalise the management of the avs. "I think the institution won't grow if it remains a family-run affair. It may be too late to dream but I hope to build ayurvedic hospitals and research centres in other Indian cities and abroad as well." For the world's ailing, it will never be too late to dream such dreams.