A tale of two medical systems......

Read specifically,this novel gives the impression of being a literary defence of Alternative Medicine or Complementary Medicine. On closer scrutiny, however, the novel reveals itself to be a veritable mirror held to contemporary society and the degree of its dehumanization.

So what we find in focus here is not only the Contemporary Vs Traditinal debate in medicine, but Lankan society and its newly- emergent and often mutually-reinforcing ills. In fact the principal illness under scrutiny in this novel, which dramatises the efficacy of the traditional system of medicine, is the fast-spreading ailment of man's callous indifference towards his neighbour: a sickness of the soul.