Asthma patients rushed and crowded in an Indian city where a miracle fish medicine was supposed to heal them of their pulmonary affection.

The Bathini Goud family has been distributing the miraculous medicine for over 150 years, free of charge, but only on two astrologically predicted days, before the monsoon. This weekend, 300 family members and volunteers will keep busy with the thousands expected to come for the cure.

The medicine is a paste made from herbs whose exact recipe is a family secret. The paste is placed in a murrel fish and then swallowed whole by the patient. Over the next 45 days, the patient takes three more doses of the paste, this time without the murrel fish, while observing a strict diet.

Thousands of hopeful asthma patients had already gathered Friday in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. More than 8,000 people had registered for the miracle cure on Wednesday.

However, the fish medicine does not work miracles overnight – it needs to be administered for several years in order to cure asthma.

As the treatment needs murrel fish in order to have effect, the department of fisheries will reportedly supply the Goud family with 100,000 specimens for this weekend’s event. There will also be arrangements for buses and trains to transport the thousands of patients.

The Goud family reports that over half a million people come from across India and even the world each year, especially for the fish cure. Bathini Harinath Goud said: “It is our belief that the medicine cures asthma and the patients too believe in its efficacy. That is the reason they have been coming for more than 150 years.”

The medicine is supposed to have been passed on by a holy man in 1845.