Jayanta Bhattacharya - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Jayanta Bhattacharya
Can medical insurance fulfill the need for health of citizens? Do we confuse "health" with "healt... more Can medical insurance fulfill the need for health of citizens? Do we confuse "health" with "health care"? What does historical evidence remain before us? Is medical insurance, much vaunted by corporate insurance companies as well as by the state, a panacea for citizens' ailing, illness and suffering? Rather, on the other hand, it makes people's life harder?
These are questions which have been addressed in this post-editorial article.
Ananda Bazar Patrika, 2024
This short post-editorial deals with the rising cost of essential drugs in India and the plight o... more This short post-editorial deals with the rising cost of essential drugs in India and the plight of the vast Indian population.
Indian Journal of History of Science, 2017
This paper aims at giving an overview of hospitals in India from ancient to modern times. It deal... more This paper aims at giving an overview of hospitals in India from ancient to modern times. It deals with European hospitals in India prior to the 19 th century, the rise of hospital medicine and the foundation of the Calcutta Medical College (CMC), and, finally, briefly discusses about the colonial encounter between modern medicine vis-à-vis Āyurveda, and some of its consequences at the level of epistemology. In our era of bio-medicalization, the hospital and the experience of the patient assume a figure completely different from that of pre-hospital medicine era. From the description of hospital in Caraka Sahitā to the provision of medical facilities made in the Brahminical religious institutions of Northern India during the early medieval period, hospitals primarily served for caring and lodging of the sick. A clear distinction between a physician and a surgeon was apparent in a 12 th-century epigraphic record. The decline of surgical knowledge and practice in the scholarly tradition of Indian medical practice was evident. The development of hospitals is among the contributions that Muslim culture brought to Indian society, where hospitals were not extremely common. In the early 19 th century, the brief phase of the Native Medical Institution and medical classes at the Calcutta Sanskrit College nurtured the gestation of hospital medicine. The new secular medicine started at death, when the bedside-practitioner gave up and the scientist-practitioner took over, and these were the same person. Aspiring to talk in the language of modernity, in mimicry of English medical college and hospitals, Āyurvedic institutions began to emerge since the late nineteenth century. Āyurveda was reconstituted in terms of modern medicine. Historically, CMC played its role in the entire process, ushered in the era of hospital medicine,and became instrumental in the marginalization of traditional Indian medicines.
Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 2024
The Alma‑Ata Declaration of 1978 was a historic hallmark in the history of public health of the 2... more The Alma‑Ata Declaration of 1978 was a historic hallmark in the history of public health of the 20th century. It stressed on comprehensive primary health care and led to the slogan of “Health for All by 2000 A.D.” The Conference documents made it clear that primary health care was essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound, and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country could afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self‑reliance and self‑determination. It was proclaimed to form an integral part of a country’s health system. In addition, as a consequence, the overall social and economic development of the community depended on its survival. It was regarded as the first level of contact of individuals, the family, and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work. Instead of disease‑centred vertical programs, it emphasised to adopt the horizontal community‑based programs. Though the worldwide stir caused by the historic Alma‑Ata Conference (1978), giant MNCs of the world remained hibernated for some time but never gave up to turn “health” into “health care” as commodity. Intriguingly enough, health was “forgotten” when the Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted after the First World War. Only at the last moment, world health was included, leading to the Health Section of the League of Nations. Recently, Intergovernmental Negotiating Body has drafted a new Pandemic Treaty which might become disastrous for general well‑being and rightful living for citizens in future. All these observations are very much relevant if family medicine and primary care are given due importance at the present moment.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
After 55 days of of West Bengal Junior Doctors' Movement barring the arrest of the ex-principal (... more After 55 days of of West Bengal Junior Doctors' Movement barring the arrest of the ex-principal (Sandip Ghosh) and the OC of Tala PS, Kolkata nothing concrete developments have taken place. The primary demands of of the WBJDF that fear-free milieu at their work place, eradication of "threat culture" and "threat syndicate" and speedy trial for heinous crime are not visible.
Even doctors have again been physically attacked and molested at various places, including Sagar Datta Medical College, Kolkata. A number of MPs and MLAs the ruling party, famous for their foul-mouthed words, are repeatedly threatening the doctors with abusive words. No action has been taken from the ruling party.
At this critical juncture, junior doctors with their massive support from senior doctors and thousands and thousands of people have taken decision to continue indefinitely their cease-work.
Suffice to say, poor and marginal people with scanty resource to treat their ailments are avid for receiving care from doctors. It turns out to be a big question whether to continue indefinitely the cease-work or not. Should some other forms of continuing the movement until the demands be made be invented?
This article focuses on these issues.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
West Bengal Junior Doctors' Front has lifted their cease-work for the time being. They have also ... more West Bengal Junior Doctors' Front has lifted their cease-work for the time being. They have also resumed their emergency duties. Also, on the same day they gone out distant flood-affected areas with medicines, food and other materials.
They are focused on their demands - Justice for Abhaya, to identify and arrest the culprits involved in this ghastly murder and heinous crime, to ensure the safety of the work place (for both men and women) and the destruction of "medical syndicate" and "threat culture" prevailing inside all the medical colleges.
If these demands are not met within a definite time frame they will again resort to cease-work. We demand justice for ABHAYA.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
It is a daunting task to chart out so many ramifications of medicine spanning last 50 years withi... more It is a daunting task to chart out so many ramifications of medicine spanning last 50 years within a few words or small space. However, to begin with, the emergence of “hospital medicine” from the last two decades of the 18th century to the first two decades of the 19th century (in the Paris hospitals) was the crucial watershed in the development of modern scientific medicine. It rested on three pillars – autopsy, bedside/clinical learning and accumulating medical statistics. By the 1780s, the patient’s narrative was no longer the focus of inquiry in the infirmary. Following Xavier Bichat’s discovery of tissues as the sites of diseases – organ localization of diseases – and the discovery of the stethoscope by Laennec in 1816, the new medicine began to shed off its old humoral legacy. Owsei Temkin, in his celebrated essay, reminds us – “Surgery, for many centuries, had relied on an objective anatomical diagnosis. In turning to a localized pathology, medicine adopted a point of view prevalent among surgeons. In part at least, the reorientation of medicine was due to an increasing approximation between medicine and surgery during the 18th century, with pathological anatomy and experimental physiology as a common ground cultivated by both disciplines.” However, for brevity of space, would like to give some sketches in the development of medicine in major fields only.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establi... more “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.” John Lennon
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
Ghastly, heinous and brutal of a 2nd-year female PGT student of RG Kar Medical and College and Ho... more Ghastly, heinous and brutal of a 2nd-year female PGT student of RG Kar Medical and College and Hospitals - one of eminent government medical colleges of the city Kolkata - is now a news reaching out to international community beyond the boundaries of West Bengal and India.
Against this mass rape and then murder by throttling of this student has drawn ire, wrath and vehement protest from all sections of doctors' community. Not only so, it has stirred citizens to such an extent that they are doing rallies in thousands.
Even more important is the fact that women all cross sections gathered in thousands in the midnight of 14 August 2024 to "Reclaim the Night", which historic and opening up the forgotten "third/civil space" in our society.
We are here for you 'Abhya' 'Tilottama'. We will keep our eyes open together for you. For your justice, our struggle we are on the streets - singing, wearing badges, shouting slogans and people have from every section of society. It is only for your justice. Our struggle will continue.
Rodopi, 2004
In a revealing paragraph Elizabeth Grosz comments, “Every body is marked by the history and speci... more In a revealing paragraph Elizabeth Grosz comments, “Every body is marked by the history and specificity of its existence. It is possible to construct a biography, a history of the body, for each individual and social body.” In doing so, she notes, “The history would include not only all the contingencies that befall a body, impinging on it from the outside,” but any such history “would also have to include the ‘raw ingredients’ out of which the body is produced.” My effort would be to delve into some of the unfamiliar nuances of the context-specific ‘Indian body’ at the epistemological level encountering dislocating colonial epistemological incursions moored in particular socio-economic roots.
4number platform.com, 2024
Ghastly, heinous and brutal of a 2nd-year female PGT student of RG Kar Medical and College and Ho... more Ghastly, heinous and brutal of a 2nd-year female PGT student of RG Kar Medical and College and Hospitals - one of eminent government medical colleges of the city Kolkata - is now a news reaching out to international community beyond the boundaries of West Bengal and India.
Against this mass rape and then murder by throttling of this student has drawn ire, wrath and vehement protest from all sections of doctors' community. Not only so, it has stirred citizens to such an extent that they are doing rallies in thousands.
Even more important is the fact that women all cross sections gathered in thousands in the midnight of 14 August 2024 to "Reclaim the Night", which historic and opening up the forgotten "third/civil space" in our society.
Docors' Dialogue, 2024
When O’Shaughnessy was born in the year 1809, two more history-changing personalities were also b... more When O’Shaughnessy was born in the year 1809, two more history-changing personalities were also born in the same year – Charles Darwin in UK and Abrham Lincoln in US. It sifnifies that it was the period when new thoughts were coming up. It is interesting to note, O’Shaughnessy’s career reflected the diversity of training that he received while studying medicine at Edinburgh University. The Scottish Enlightenment and the influence of Common Sense philosophy in Scottish educational institutions saw the syllabi, including the science curriculum, adopt a holistic approach: all aspects of philosophical debate were combined with a detailed knowledge of the body, and of physics and chemistry. It can be safely said that O’Shuaghnessy started his medical career as a forensic chemist.
He was equally interested in theoretical and experimental chemistry, physics, medical toxicology, in the discovery of newer drugs, first international medical use of cannabis, discovery of ‘narcotine’ – an opium derivative – to replace Peruvian bark or quinine which was costly for the use of poor Indian people, experiments with mineriology and so on and, also, telegraph too.
Moreover, on behalf of the Central Board of Health, London, he published a book on on chemical pathology of malignant malaria. He prescribed some provisional “treatment of the fever stage” by which he expected “much benefit from the frequently repeated use of the beutral salts by the mouth or by enemata”. He proposed the following compositon: “Phosphate of Soda – ten grains. Muriate of Soda – ten grains. Carbonate of Soda – five grains. Sulphate of Soda – ten grains. Dissolve in six ounces of water. The mixture to be repeated every second hour.”
Between 1834 and 1837 there was a race for the patenting of the best telegraphic device. Morse, O’Shaughnessy, Wheatstone and others were inventing separate versions of telegraphy and were harnessing electricity for different purposes. O’Shaughnessy joined this race but had no right to patent any device not constructed in Britain. His use of original methods and local resources were completely ignored because of his endeavour in a colony.
This paper tries honestlyto retrieve a scientific genius like O’Shaughnessy from almost complete social amnesia.
Indian Journal of History of Science, 2015
From today's medical perspective, there is little mention of case records in India. With the arri... more From today's medical perspective, there is little mention of case records in India. With the arrival of Western medicine in India in the 18th century, there emerged the practice of keeping case records in hospitals erected by European powers. It did not automatically lead to hospital medicine, which required physical examination, autopsy, statistics and museums for preserving the cases. The foundation of the Calcutta Medical College in 1835, built on the model of University College of London, ushered into it. Serial experiments in Calcutta like producing native dressers in Madras establishments, the founding of the Native Medical Institution (1822) for native doctors, introduction of medical classes at the Sanskrit College and Madrassa etc. preceded it. The 18th-19th century case records were of European soldiers by European doctors. Almost every surgeon had charge of 700 patients. They would keep a regular diary of cases. In 1826, Tytler had introduced keeping case records in Persian by the NMI students. The conceptual basis of clinical case is the ordering of its facts by the agency of time. Its material dimension is the transcription of this evidence in written form, thereafter embodied as a medical record of observed events. After 1826, the keeping of case records was internalized by Indian students. Till then they did not perform dissection beyond zootomy. Hence the cases were actually records of symptoms, instead of signs which were to be confirmed through pathological anatomy. The transition was made possible through CMC. In CMC, students were to examine patients at the bedside, perform dissection after his/her death and keep records which were to be produced during examination. At the same time, they had to keep records of both medical and surgical cases, and the reports of experimentation the Jennerian vaccine and various drugs-both European and indigenous-on patients. Along with CMC, through the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta (1823) and its journal Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta (1825) circulation of medical, surgical, and pharmaco-botanical knowledge throughout India and to Europe became practicable. The introduction of anatomical dissection secularized both the notion of the body and medical education stripped off from caste prejudice and parochial hierarchy. The hospital case records became a materiality through internalization of hospital medicine in its full gamut by Indians like S G Chuckerbutty.
Preventive Medicine: Research and Reviews, 2024
The emergence of public health in India, as propounded by esteemed historians, has been accepted ... more The emergence of public health in India, as propounded by esteemed historians, has been accepted thus – the reach and efficacy of Western medicine was strictly limited in the period up to the 1860s and barely extended beyond a small European enclave. Problematizing this concept, I argue that the beginning of public health, intertwined with the concept of public service, did occur from the first batch of graduates of CMC employed in various dispensaries. I argue that the journey was – CMC > Graduates > Dispensaries > Beginning of Public Health – leading to instilling the population at large with medical governance and techniques.
Frontier, 2024
In 1978, there emerged as a milestone of the twentieth century in the field of public health, and... more In 1978, there emerged as a milestone of the twentieth century in the field of public health, and it identified comprehensive primary health care as the key to the attainment of the goal of "Health for All by 2000 A.D." in the Conference on Primary Health Care held at then Alma-Ata, USSR. It was jointly sponsored by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children's Fund. Some Christian Missionary groups also played a vital role in convening this international conference. Conference on Primary Health Care (PHC) in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, in 1978, brought together 134 countries and 67 international organisations (China was notably absent). Chief architect of this Conference was Dr Halfdan Mahler. The Conference emphasised on the point: Primary health care is essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound, and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-reliance and self-determination. It forms an integral part both of the country's health system, of which it is the central function and main focus, and of the overall social and economic development of the community. It is the first level of contact of individuals, the family, and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work, and constitutes the first elements of a continuing health care process.
Current Science, 2011
The history of Calcutta Medical College (CMC) is intertwined with the rise of rational scientific... more The history of Calcutta Medical College (CMC) is intertwined with the rise of rational scientific medicine in India. This new kind of medicine was premised on dissection-based anatomical knowledge and was secular in nature. The first dissection in CMC by a high-caste Hindu ushered in ramifications of this medicine into every aspect of Indian society. The singular act of dissection entailed indelible changes in the perception of body, disease and self of the Indian population. Medicine brought forth a new paradigm of knowing the body. Arguably, being the first Indian dissector, Madhusudan Gupta is historically tied up with this transformation of medicine.
Ananda Bazaar Ptrika, 2024
As India has stated, 'End TB' is to be completed within 2025, instead of 2030 as is ad advocated ... more As India has stated, 'End TB' is to be completed within 2025, instead of 2030 as is ad advocated by WHO. But India faces a tremendous catastrophic cost for TB treatment. This article in Bengali has addressed this issues. It was published as post-editorial in Ananda Bazaar Patrika on 3.06.2024.
Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 2024
The Alma‑Ata Declaration of 1978 was a historic hallmark in the history of public health of the 2... more The Alma‑Ata Declaration of 1978 was a historic hallmark in the history of public health of the 20th century. It stressed on comprehensive primary health care and led to the slogan of “Health for All by 2000 A.D.” The Conference documents made it clear that primary health care was essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound, and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country could afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self‑reliance and self‑determination. It was proclaimed to form an integral part of a country’s health system. In addition, as a consequence, the overall social and economic development of the community depended on its survival. It was regarded as the first level of contact of individuals, the family, and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work. Instead of disease‑centred vertical programs, it emphasised to adopt the horizontal community‑based programs. Though the worldwide stir caused by the historic Alma‑Ata Conference (1978), giant MNCs of the world remained hibernated for some time but never gave up to turn “health” into “health care” as commodity. Intriguingly enough, health was “forgotten” when the Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted after the First World War. Only at the last moment, world health was included, leading to the Health Section of the League of Nations. Recently, Intergovernmental Negotiating Body has drafted a new Pandemic Treaty which might become disastrous for general well‑being and rightful living for citizens in future. All these observations are very much relevant if family medicine and primary care are given due importance at the present moment.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
It is a daunting task to chart out so many ramifications of medicine spanning last 50 years withi... more It is a daunting task to chart out so many ramifications of medicine spanning last 50 years within a few words or small space. However, to begin with, the emergence of “hospital medicine” from the last two decades of the 18th century to the first two decades of the 19th century (in the Paris hospitals) was the crucial watershed in the development of modern scientific medicine. It rested on three pillars – autopsy, bedside/clinical learning and accumulating medical statistics. By the 1780s, the patient’s narrative was no longer the focus of inquiry in the infirmary. Following Xavier Bichat’s discovery of tissues as the sites of diseases – organ localization of diseases – and the discovery of the stethoscope by Laennec in 1816, the new medicine began to shed off its old humoral legacy. Owsei Temkin, in his celebrated essay, reminds us – “Surgery, for many centuries, had relied on an objective anatomical diagnosis. In turning to a localized pathology, medicine adopted a point of view prevalent among surgeons. In part at least, the reorientation of medicine was due to an increasing approximation between medicine and surgery during the 18th century, with pathological anatomy and experimental physiology as a common ground cultivated by both disciplines.” However, for brevity of space, would like to give some sketches in the development of medicine in major fields only.
In this scandalously brief review, I have tried to do a stocktaking of these developments further in a sketchy way.
Preventive Medicine: Research and Review, 2024
Public health is an umbrella term encompassing various professions, policies and programmes that ... more Public health is an umbrella term encompassing various professions, policies and programmes that promote positive community‑wide health outcomes. It is also an interdisciplinary field. Epidemiology is a later incorporation within the ambit of public health.
Since ancient times to modernity, the concept of public health has incrementally developed – from personal hygiene, to ‘medical police’ to anti‑sepsis to state intervention, to name a few. But in colonial India, European science, as practised in the metropolis, got ‘refracted’ and, to an extent, ‘mutated’ – not exactly the same metropolitan science. Anderson, quoting Dipesh Chakrabarty, argues that in colonial India the discourse on filth in public spaces was a ‘language of modernity, of civic consciousness and public health, of even certain ideas of beauty related to the management of public space and interests, an order of aesthetics from which the ideals of public health and hygiene cannot be separated’. The expansion of dispensaries and reinforcing these dispensaries by the graduates of the first Asian medical college - Calcutta Medical College - succeeded to fill the gap.
Can medical insurance fulfill the need for health of citizens? Do we confuse "health" with "healt... more Can medical insurance fulfill the need for health of citizens? Do we confuse "health" with "health care"? What does historical evidence remain before us? Is medical insurance, much vaunted by corporate insurance companies as well as by the state, a panacea for citizens' ailing, illness and suffering? Rather, on the other hand, it makes people's life harder?
These are questions which have been addressed in this post-editorial article.
Ananda Bazar Patrika, 2024
This short post-editorial deals with the rising cost of essential drugs in India and the plight o... more This short post-editorial deals with the rising cost of essential drugs in India and the plight of the vast Indian population.
Indian Journal of History of Science, 2017
This paper aims at giving an overview of hospitals in India from ancient to modern times. It deal... more This paper aims at giving an overview of hospitals in India from ancient to modern times. It deals with European hospitals in India prior to the 19 th century, the rise of hospital medicine and the foundation of the Calcutta Medical College (CMC), and, finally, briefly discusses about the colonial encounter between modern medicine vis-à-vis Āyurveda, and some of its consequences at the level of epistemology. In our era of bio-medicalization, the hospital and the experience of the patient assume a figure completely different from that of pre-hospital medicine era. From the description of hospital in Caraka Sahitā to the provision of medical facilities made in the Brahminical religious institutions of Northern India during the early medieval period, hospitals primarily served for caring and lodging of the sick. A clear distinction between a physician and a surgeon was apparent in a 12 th-century epigraphic record. The decline of surgical knowledge and practice in the scholarly tradition of Indian medical practice was evident. The development of hospitals is among the contributions that Muslim culture brought to Indian society, where hospitals were not extremely common. In the early 19 th century, the brief phase of the Native Medical Institution and medical classes at the Calcutta Sanskrit College nurtured the gestation of hospital medicine. The new secular medicine started at death, when the bedside-practitioner gave up and the scientist-practitioner took over, and these were the same person. Aspiring to talk in the language of modernity, in mimicry of English medical college and hospitals, Āyurvedic institutions began to emerge since the late nineteenth century. Āyurveda was reconstituted in terms of modern medicine. Historically, CMC played its role in the entire process, ushered in the era of hospital medicine,and became instrumental in the marginalization of traditional Indian medicines.
Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 2024
The Alma‑Ata Declaration of 1978 was a historic hallmark in the history of public health of the 2... more The Alma‑Ata Declaration of 1978 was a historic hallmark in the history of public health of the 20th century. It stressed on comprehensive primary health care and led to the slogan of “Health for All by 2000 A.D.” The Conference documents made it clear that primary health care was essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound, and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country could afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self‑reliance and self‑determination. It was proclaimed to form an integral part of a country’s health system. In addition, as a consequence, the overall social and economic development of the community depended on its survival. It was regarded as the first level of contact of individuals, the family, and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work. Instead of disease‑centred vertical programs, it emphasised to adopt the horizontal community‑based programs. Though the worldwide stir caused by the historic Alma‑Ata Conference (1978), giant MNCs of the world remained hibernated for some time but never gave up to turn “health” into “health care” as commodity. Intriguingly enough, health was “forgotten” when the Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted after the First World War. Only at the last moment, world health was included, leading to the Health Section of the League of Nations. Recently, Intergovernmental Negotiating Body has drafted a new Pandemic Treaty which might become disastrous for general well‑being and rightful living for citizens in future. All these observations are very much relevant if family medicine and primary care are given due importance at the present moment.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
After 55 days of of West Bengal Junior Doctors' Movement barring the arrest of the ex-principal (... more After 55 days of of West Bengal Junior Doctors' Movement barring the arrest of the ex-principal (Sandip Ghosh) and the OC of Tala PS, Kolkata nothing concrete developments have taken place. The primary demands of of the WBJDF that fear-free milieu at their work place, eradication of "threat culture" and "threat syndicate" and speedy trial for heinous crime are not visible.
Even doctors have again been physically attacked and molested at various places, including Sagar Datta Medical College, Kolkata. A number of MPs and MLAs the ruling party, famous for their foul-mouthed words, are repeatedly threatening the doctors with abusive words. No action has been taken from the ruling party.
At this critical juncture, junior doctors with their massive support from senior doctors and thousands and thousands of people have taken decision to continue indefinitely their cease-work.
Suffice to say, poor and marginal people with scanty resource to treat their ailments are avid for receiving care from doctors. It turns out to be a big question whether to continue indefinitely the cease-work or not. Should some other forms of continuing the movement until the demands be made be invented?
This article focuses on these issues.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
West Bengal Junior Doctors' Front has lifted their cease-work for the time being. They have also ... more West Bengal Junior Doctors' Front has lifted their cease-work for the time being. They have also resumed their emergency duties. Also, on the same day they gone out distant flood-affected areas with medicines, food and other materials.
They are focused on their demands - Justice for Abhaya, to identify and arrest the culprits involved in this ghastly murder and heinous crime, to ensure the safety of the work place (for both men and women) and the destruction of "medical syndicate" and "threat culture" prevailing inside all the medical colleges.
If these demands are not met within a definite time frame they will again resort to cease-work. We demand justice for ABHAYA.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
It is a daunting task to chart out so many ramifications of medicine spanning last 50 years withi... more It is a daunting task to chart out so many ramifications of medicine spanning last 50 years within a few words or small space. However, to begin with, the emergence of “hospital medicine” from the last two decades of the 18th century to the first two decades of the 19th century (in the Paris hospitals) was the crucial watershed in the development of modern scientific medicine. It rested on three pillars – autopsy, bedside/clinical learning and accumulating medical statistics. By the 1780s, the patient’s narrative was no longer the focus of inquiry in the infirmary. Following Xavier Bichat’s discovery of tissues as the sites of diseases – organ localization of diseases – and the discovery of the stethoscope by Laennec in 1816, the new medicine began to shed off its old humoral legacy. Owsei Temkin, in his celebrated essay, reminds us – “Surgery, for many centuries, had relied on an objective anatomical diagnosis. In turning to a localized pathology, medicine adopted a point of view prevalent among surgeons. In part at least, the reorientation of medicine was due to an increasing approximation between medicine and surgery during the 18th century, with pathological anatomy and experimental physiology as a common ground cultivated by both disciplines.” However, for brevity of space, would like to give some sketches in the development of medicine in major fields only.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establi... more “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.” John Lennon
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
Ghastly, heinous and brutal of a 2nd-year female PGT student of RG Kar Medical and College and Ho... more Ghastly, heinous and brutal of a 2nd-year female PGT student of RG Kar Medical and College and Hospitals - one of eminent government medical colleges of the city Kolkata - is now a news reaching out to international community beyond the boundaries of West Bengal and India.
Against this mass rape and then murder by throttling of this student has drawn ire, wrath and vehement protest from all sections of doctors' community. Not only so, it has stirred citizens to such an extent that they are doing rallies in thousands.
Even more important is the fact that women all cross sections gathered in thousands in the midnight of 14 August 2024 to "Reclaim the Night", which historic and opening up the forgotten "third/civil space" in our society.
We are here for you 'Abhya' 'Tilottama'. We will keep our eyes open together for you. For your justice, our struggle we are on the streets - singing, wearing badges, shouting slogans and people have from every section of society. It is only for your justice. Our struggle will continue.
Rodopi, 2004
In a revealing paragraph Elizabeth Grosz comments, “Every body is marked by the history and speci... more In a revealing paragraph Elizabeth Grosz comments, “Every body is marked by the history and specificity of its existence. It is possible to construct a biography, a history of the body, for each individual and social body.” In doing so, she notes, “The history would include not only all the contingencies that befall a body, impinging on it from the outside,” but any such history “would also have to include the ‘raw ingredients’ out of which the body is produced.” My effort would be to delve into some of the unfamiliar nuances of the context-specific ‘Indian body’ at the epistemological level encountering dislocating colonial epistemological incursions moored in particular socio-economic roots.
4number platform.com, 2024
Ghastly, heinous and brutal of a 2nd-year female PGT student of RG Kar Medical and College and Ho... more Ghastly, heinous and brutal of a 2nd-year female PGT student of RG Kar Medical and College and Hospitals - one of eminent government medical colleges of the city Kolkata - is now a news reaching out to international community beyond the boundaries of West Bengal and India.
Against this mass rape and then murder by throttling of this student has drawn ire, wrath and vehement protest from all sections of doctors' community. Not only so, it has stirred citizens to such an extent that they are doing rallies in thousands.
Even more important is the fact that women all cross sections gathered in thousands in the midnight of 14 August 2024 to "Reclaim the Night", which historic and opening up the forgotten "third/civil space" in our society.
Docors' Dialogue, 2024
When O’Shaughnessy was born in the year 1809, two more history-changing personalities were also b... more When O’Shaughnessy was born in the year 1809, two more history-changing personalities were also born in the same year – Charles Darwin in UK and Abrham Lincoln in US. It sifnifies that it was the period when new thoughts were coming up. It is interesting to note, O’Shaughnessy’s career reflected the diversity of training that he received while studying medicine at Edinburgh University. The Scottish Enlightenment and the influence of Common Sense philosophy in Scottish educational institutions saw the syllabi, including the science curriculum, adopt a holistic approach: all aspects of philosophical debate were combined with a detailed knowledge of the body, and of physics and chemistry. It can be safely said that O’Shuaghnessy started his medical career as a forensic chemist.
He was equally interested in theoretical and experimental chemistry, physics, medical toxicology, in the discovery of newer drugs, first international medical use of cannabis, discovery of ‘narcotine’ – an opium derivative – to replace Peruvian bark or quinine which was costly for the use of poor Indian people, experiments with mineriology and so on and, also, telegraph too.
Moreover, on behalf of the Central Board of Health, London, he published a book on on chemical pathology of malignant malaria. He prescribed some provisional “treatment of the fever stage” by which he expected “much benefit from the frequently repeated use of the beutral salts by the mouth or by enemata”. He proposed the following compositon: “Phosphate of Soda – ten grains. Muriate of Soda – ten grains. Carbonate of Soda – five grains. Sulphate of Soda – ten grains. Dissolve in six ounces of water. The mixture to be repeated every second hour.”
Between 1834 and 1837 there was a race for the patenting of the best telegraphic device. Morse, O’Shaughnessy, Wheatstone and others were inventing separate versions of telegraphy and were harnessing electricity for different purposes. O’Shaughnessy joined this race but had no right to patent any device not constructed in Britain. His use of original methods and local resources were completely ignored because of his endeavour in a colony.
This paper tries honestlyto retrieve a scientific genius like O’Shaughnessy from almost complete social amnesia.
Indian Journal of History of Science, 2015
From today's medical perspective, there is little mention of case records in India. With the arri... more From today's medical perspective, there is little mention of case records in India. With the arrival of Western medicine in India in the 18th century, there emerged the practice of keeping case records in hospitals erected by European powers. It did not automatically lead to hospital medicine, which required physical examination, autopsy, statistics and museums for preserving the cases. The foundation of the Calcutta Medical College in 1835, built on the model of University College of London, ushered into it. Serial experiments in Calcutta like producing native dressers in Madras establishments, the founding of the Native Medical Institution (1822) for native doctors, introduction of medical classes at the Sanskrit College and Madrassa etc. preceded it. The 18th-19th century case records were of European soldiers by European doctors. Almost every surgeon had charge of 700 patients. They would keep a regular diary of cases. In 1826, Tytler had introduced keeping case records in Persian by the NMI students. The conceptual basis of clinical case is the ordering of its facts by the agency of time. Its material dimension is the transcription of this evidence in written form, thereafter embodied as a medical record of observed events. After 1826, the keeping of case records was internalized by Indian students. Till then they did not perform dissection beyond zootomy. Hence the cases were actually records of symptoms, instead of signs which were to be confirmed through pathological anatomy. The transition was made possible through CMC. In CMC, students were to examine patients at the bedside, perform dissection after his/her death and keep records which were to be produced during examination. At the same time, they had to keep records of both medical and surgical cases, and the reports of experimentation the Jennerian vaccine and various drugs-both European and indigenous-on patients. Along with CMC, through the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta (1823) and its journal Transactions of the Medical and Physical Society of Calcutta (1825) circulation of medical, surgical, and pharmaco-botanical knowledge throughout India and to Europe became practicable. The introduction of anatomical dissection secularized both the notion of the body and medical education stripped off from caste prejudice and parochial hierarchy. The hospital case records became a materiality through internalization of hospital medicine in its full gamut by Indians like S G Chuckerbutty.
Preventive Medicine: Research and Reviews, 2024
The emergence of public health in India, as propounded by esteemed historians, has been accepted ... more The emergence of public health in India, as propounded by esteemed historians, has been accepted thus – the reach and efficacy of Western medicine was strictly limited in the period up to the 1860s and barely extended beyond a small European enclave. Problematizing this concept, I argue that the beginning of public health, intertwined with the concept of public service, did occur from the first batch of graduates of CMC employed in various dispensaries. I argue that the journey was – CMC > Graduates > Dispensaries > Beginning of Public Health – leading to instilling the population at large with medical governance and techniques.
Frontier, 2024
In 1978, there emerged as a milestone of the twentieth century in the field of public health, and... more In 1978, there emerged as a milestone of the twentieth century in the field of public health, and it identified comprehensive primary health care as the key to the attainment of the goal of "Health for All by 2000 A.D." in the Conference on Primary Health Care held at then Alma-Ata, USSR. It was jointly sponsored by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children's Fund. Some Christian Missionary groups also played a vital role in convening this international conference. Conference on Primary Health Care (PHC) in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, in 1978, brought together 134 countries and 67 international organisations (China was notably absent). Chief architect of this Conference was Dr Halfdan Mahler. The Conference emphasised on the point: Primary health care is essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound, and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country can afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self-reliance and self-determination. It forms an integral part both of the country's health system, of which it is the central function and main focus, and of the overall social and economic development of the community. It is the first level of contact of individuals, the family, and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work, and constitutes the first elements of a continuing health care process.
Current Science, 2011
The history of Calcutta Medical College (CMC) is intertwined with the rise of rational scientific... more The history of Calcutta Medical College (CMC) is intertwined with the rise of rational scientific medicine in India. This new kind of medicine was premised on dissection-based anatomical knowledge and was secular in nature. The first dissection in CMC by a high-caste Hindu ushered in ramifications of this medicine into every aspect of Indian society. The singular act of dissection entailed indelible changes in the perception of body, disease and self of the Indian population. Medicine brought forth a new paradigm of knowing the body. Arguably, being the first Indian dissector, Madhusudan Gupta is historically tied up with this transformation of medicine.
Ananda Bazaar Ptrika, 2024
As India has stated, 'End TB' is to be completed within 2025, instead of 2030 as is ad advocated ... more As India has stated, 'End TB' is to be completed within 2025, instead of 2030 as is ad advocated by WHO. But India faces a tremendous catastrophic cost for TB treatment. This article in Bengali has addressed this issues. It was published as post-editorial in Ananda Bazaar Patrika on 3.06.2024.
Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 2024
The Alma‑Ata Declaration of 1978 was a historic hallmark in the history of public health of the 2... more The Alma‑Ata Declaration of 1978 was a historic hallmark in the history of public health of the 20th century. It stressed on comprehensive primary health care and led to the slogan of “Health for All by 2000 A.D.” The Conference documents made it clear that primary health care was essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound, and socially acceptable methods and technology made universally accessible to individuals and families in the community through their full participation and at a cost that the community and country could afford to maintain at every stage of their development in the spirit of self‑reliance and self‑determination. It was proclaimed to form an integral part of a country’s health system. In addition, as a consequence, the overall social and economic development of the community depended on its survival. It was regarded as the first level of contact of individuals, the family, and community with the national health system bringing health care as close as possible to where people live and work. Instead of disease‑centred vertical programs, it emphasised to adopt the horizontal community‑based programs. Though the worldwide stir caused by the historic Alma‑Ata Conference (1978), giant MNCs of the world remained hibernated for some time but never gave up to turn “health” into “health care” as commodity. Intriguingly enough, health was “forgotten” when the Covenant of the League of Nations was drafted after the First World War. Only at the last moment, world health was included, leading to the Health Section of the League of Nations. Recently, Intergovernmental Negotiating Body has drafted a new Pandemic Treaty which might become disastrous for general well‑being and rightful living for citizens in future. All these observations are very much relevant if family medicine and primary care are given due importance at the present moment.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2024
It is a daunting task to chart out so many ramifications of medicine spanning last 50 years withi... more It is a daunting task to chart out so many ramifications of medicine spanning last 50 years within a few words or small space. However, to begin with, the emergence of “hospital medicine” from the last two decades of the 18th century to the first two decades of the 19th century (in the Paris hospitals) was the crucial watershed in the development of modern scientific medicine. It rested on three pillars – autopsy, bedside/clinical learning and accumulating medical statistics. By the 1780s, the patient’s narrative was no longer the focus of inquiry in the infirmary. Following Xavier Bichat’s discovery of tissues as the sites of diseases – organ localization of diseases – and the discovery of the stethoscope by Laennec in 1816, the new medicine began to shed off its old humoral legacy. Owsei Temkin, in his celebrated essay, reminds us – “Surgery, for many centuries, had relied on an objective anatomical diagnosis. In turning to a localized pathology, medicine adopted a point of view prevalent among surgeons. In part at least, the reorientation of medicine was due to an increasing approximation between medicine and surgery during the 18th century, with pathological anatomy and experimental physiology as a common ground cultivated by both disciplines.” However, for brevity of space, would like to give some sketches in the development of medicine in major fields only.
In this scandalously brief review, I have tried to do a stocktaking of these developments further in a sketchy way.
Preventive Medicine: Research and Review, 2024
Public health is an umbrella term encompassing various professions, policies and programmes that ... more Public health is an umbrella term encompassing various professions, policies and programmes that promote positive community‑wide health outcomes. It is also an interdisciplinary field. Epidemiology is a later incorporation within the ambit of public health.
Since ancient times to modernity, the concept of public health has incrementally developed – from personal hygiene, to ‘medical police’ to anti‑sepsis to state intervention, to name a few. But in colonial India, European science, as practised in the metropolis, got ‘refracted’ and, to an extent, ‘mutated’ – not exactly the same metropolitan science. Anderson, quoting Dipesh Chakrabarty, argues that in colonial India the discourse on filth in public spaces was a ‘language of modernity, of civic consciousness and public health, of even certain ideas of beauty related to the management of public space and interests, an order of aesthetics from which the ideals of public health and hygiene cannot be separated’. The expansion of dispensaries and reinforcing these dispensaries by the graduates of the first Asian medical college - Calcutta Medical College - succeeded to fill the gap.
The book under review makes the supposedly robust claim that Kanu Sanyal, one of the key personal... more The book under review makes the supposedly robust claim that Kanu Sanyal, one of the key personalities who pioneered the uprising of Naxalbari, was the “First Naxal”. Sage publications being the publisher, the book should gain a wider audience than any Bengali book written on this subject. Moreover, particularly in this era of “de-politicization” of students’ politics as well as a palpably vacuous social milieu inscribed by pragmatism, this text (perhaps no text being an exception) should be critically and carefully read. One can regard it as a human document too, with political notes and overtones heavily inscribed.
Doctors' Dialogue, 2021
This paper deals with how besides Kadambini Ganguly, the first female medical graduate in India, ... more This paper deals with how besides Kadambini Ganguly, the first female medical graduate in India, heroic efforts of Anandabai Joshi and others paved the way for general female education on the one hand, and entry into medical education on the other.
Nirantar Journal, 2022
Locating castes (in plural) in Indian society is riddled with numerous vexing issues. In institut... more Locating castes (in plural) in Indian society is riddled with numerous vexing issues. In institution like the Calcutta Medical College (1835), the first Asian modern medical college, published castes of students in its annual reports for a long time. But to make docile, disciplined and obedient citizenry needed for the emerging modern nation state they were put under the blanket of 'secular education'. The question of caste/s has been observed, analyzed and interpreted from different perspectives by thinkers including Marx, Gandhi and Ambedkar. This paper comprehensively deals with these issues at length. Louis Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus has also been discussed, as has been Partha Chatterjee.
Cultural Contours of History and Archaeology, Vol. 8, pp. 263-280, 2015
Anatomical knowledge, especially knowledge gained from dissecting a cadaver, was the “Midas touch... more Anatomical knowledge, especially knowledge gained from dissecting a cadaver, was the “Midas touch” which ushered in a new era of medicine. It universalized ‘modern’ medicine and made it the only source of practical as well as theoretical knowledge of the body. All other medical knowledge (traditional and indigenous) was made subservient to it. Importantly, the edifice of modern medicine was constructed over this new theoretical backbone. Anatomy has a long and chequered past as a scientific discipline. Its heyday came in the 19th century, with the development of quick, effective surgical techniques on the battlefield and, later, the introduction of anesthesia, when knowledge of the structural intricacies of the body began to have practical significance for doctors. A new norm and epistemological structure began to emerge.
Eastern and Western medicine began with similar fusions of religion, spirituality, and science. Anatomists resorted to analogies of the universe to explain the body when superstitions surrounding death and the fate of the soul prevented closer observation through dissection. The dead body was venerated and paid due honour. Dissection was a taboo and social stigma. Like Āyurveda, there was greater emphasis on prognosis than diagnosis.
Uttarer Saradin , 2022
Kadambini Ganguly (18 July 1861 – 3 October 1923) was not only the first female physician of Indi... more Kadambini Ganguly (18 July 1861 – 3 October 1923) was not only the first female physician of India passing out from the Calcutta Medical College, she was also pioneering in her role in national politics, labor problems and gender issues.
Anandibai Joshee also graduated in the same as of Kdambini. But she did her graduation from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, not from any Indian institution.
Uttarer Saradin, 2022
Kadambini Ganguly (18 July 1861 – 3 October 1923) was not only the first female physician of Indi... more Kadambini Ganguly (18 July 1861 – 3 October 1923) was not only the first female physician of India passing out from the Calcutta Medical College, she was also pioneering in her role in national politics, labor problems and gender issues.
Anandibai Joshee also graduated in the same as of Kdambini. But she did her graduation from the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, not from any Indian institution.