CHENNAI: Bone is a connective tissue that provides internal support for animals. This frame work provides a structure to the body and also protects their vital organs. Normally, a human body is made up of 206 bones, each associated with various functions and essentially providing shape and helping in movement.
Movement gives animals freedom. No healthy bones would mean no freedom. Thus, bone fractures could really restrict the movement of animals.Traditional bone-setting was practiced long before the introduction of modern orthopaedics. It is estimated that even today, more than 70,000 traditional bone-setters practice in India.
These bone-setters diagnose complaints by just pressing the fractures, without using an x-ray. They apply no casts. Instead, they use several natural resources. One of the popular ones they use is the ‘Elumbotti’ (bone-knit) plant in Tamil Nadu. Elumbotti is botanically known as Ormocarpum sennoides (Willd.) DC. And belongs to the family Leguminosae. It is an undershrub reaching up to 1 metre in height. The leaves are alternate (pinnate); the 9-13 leaflets alternate too and are 2-3 cm long and 1.2 cm broad and the racemes axillary is slender and 6-10 cm long. The flowers are about 1 cm long. Pods are 2-3 cm long, three to five have joints with soft echinate process. These joints of pods can be detached and attached back as original. This ‘sign of doctrine’ can be used for setting bones, where, after carefully analysing the complaints of the injured, the healers crush and apply the leaves and fruits on the fracture.