Dr Lajpatrai Mehra practises neuro therapy in a small out-of-view clinic in a basement at Bandra Bandstand. He calls himself "an uneducated man" who has devised this system and found it so effective that "not even the West has anything like it".

And bearing testimony to his confidence is the fact that his clinic is always jam-packed with patients suffering from all kinds of ailments — blindness, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson's disease, cancer, slip disc, spondilitis, paralysis and asthma. "If these people can be cured, they will be cured here," he says, with calm conviction. His clientele includes every mentionable politician, including the president of India. But Mehra maintains a low profile. "We teach the patients what to do and send them back home," he says.

But what is this magic touch? In the clinic, there are a number of small ante rooms where you find patients lying on the ground, with a man or a woman who has been trained to administer this therapy standing on their legs. Sounds strange doesn't it?

"This therapy works," explains Mehra, "by applying pressure to strategic parts of the body, when it is found that these parts are not functioning as they should be. The flow of blood to these parts activates their function and the cure is effected." The body, according to Mehra, is capable of manufacturing all the chemicals required and which allopathic medicine administers from the outside. For instance, Heparin is a drug which is injected into the body by allopathy for a number of illnesses. "These injections are available in the market," says Mehra, "but the body has the capacity to produce its own heparin.

So, we activate this function which has obviously become sluggish. And the body itself cures the illness. The system works by the body sending it's own feedback. Like when a certain substance is not needed, it will automatically stop producing it. It is about getting the body to function in such a way that it becomes its own monitor." A woman with her small child, who is constantly crying, explains that her child had been born blind. Says Mehra, "Doctors charge lakhs of rupees to do their operation but when the patient comes to him for an explanation, they don't even have time to talk to him. Most retardation in children comes due to the umbilical cord being cut too early."

It was while practising the Indian system of setting the nabhi (the umbilical cord) that Mehra understood the physiology of the human body and started educating himself about it's functions. He has come up with a number of discoveries that could well change the approach of allopathy to disease. For example, he claims that the functions of the two kidneys are different -- the left kidney filters acids, while the right kidney filters alkalines. Allopathic medicine is on its way to acknowledging these facts, which he put forth in a congress of alternative medicine.

Mehra plans to have 15,000 centres all over the country by the end of this century. His is a system which administers no medicine. But it requires dedicated men and women to understand the therapy and have enough compassion and empathy for the human being to propagate this system.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.