Reflections

Today the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine, like most Calcutta institutions is in a state of semi paralysed stupor. It was established in 1921. Behind its establishment lay a suggestion by Dr Alfred Mc Cabe Dallas, a medical officer in an Assam Tea garden who, in a letter published on the 10 March 1910 to the Englishman newspaper, (the then pillar of the Calcutta imperial establishment,) suggested that a School of Tropical Medicine be set up. He suggested Assam as allocation as he felt that here there was a large pool of patients. His suggestion was taken up by Sir Leonard Rogers (1868-1962). Sir Leonard was the Professor of Pathology at the Medical College, Calcutta. Born in Cornwall, he studied medicine at the St Mary’s Hospital in London, before joining the Indian Medical Service in 1893. He was one of the first pathologists in India and did some good work in leishmaniasis before being appointed to the Chair of Pathology at the Medical College in 1900. He wrote hugely influent...

It was already dark as the plane took off from Kuala Lumpur on the way to Kuala Terengannu. KT is on the East coast of Malaysia, lying abreast the South China Sea. The name carries many romantic connotations. To me it conjures up an image of Chinese junks carrying the produce of the Middle Kingdom traversing the South China Sea to the Spice Islands in the South for thousands of years and acting as the highway from China to their trysts with Indian merchants travelling across the Bay of Bengal to meet them in the Indonesian Archipelago or the Malaysian peninsula.. Kuala Terengganu is the capital of a small state of Terengganu. It was founded by Chinese merchants coming to the Malay Peninsula to trade. Originally a Hindu state, it was the first area in the peninsula to accept Islam. The Malacca empire was its overlord in medieval times, but in the eighteenth century Terengganu became a separate Sultanate. This Sultanate was ruled by Siam for some time before the British made it part of...