Lakshmikutty is a 75-year-old poison healer from India

Lakshmikutty Amma is a poetess, a dramatist and a folklore teacher who is fondly known as the ‘medicine queen’ for her successful contribution in the field of traditional Indian medicine for last 50 years.

The Government of India recently awarded her Padma Shri, the country’s fourth highest civilian honours for her breakthrough work in traditional medicine.

Lakshmikutty Amma credits her mother, who was a midwife, for transferring the medicinal knowledge to her at a young age. Amma is fluent in world’s oldest language ‘Samskrit’ and remembers more than 500 varieties of medicine. She has grown medicinal plants around her house as she treats people with varying diseases and most commonly ‘snake poison’. She can treat all kinds of snake poison, hence the name “poison healer”.

“I keenly watch the nature, it has all the remedies. Even animals and fish have medicinal power” – Lakshmikutty Amma