Reflections

Unproven Oral Treatments Essiac Dietary supplements and herbal remedies, typically unstudied or disproved, are commonly used by cancer patients. One enduring herbal remedy is Essiac, also marketed as Flor-Essence. Initially used by a Native American healer from South-West Canada, a nurse named Rene Caisse popularized the herbal formulation as a cancer treatment in the 1920s. She named the remedy Essiac, her last name spelled backwards. Initially comprising four herbs, Indian rhubarb (Rheum palmatum), sheepshead sorrel (Rumex acetosa), slippery elm (Ulmus fulva), and burdock root (Arctium lappa), other herbs were added over the years by various dietary supplement manufacturers. Today, there are several different Essiac preparations available online and in health food stores, in tea, pill, and liquid form. (A search on Amazon.com brings up hundreds of entries.) In general, there is a lack of both safety and efficacy data for Essiac and Essiac formulations, and no clinical evidence s...

This article first published in Oncology 2012;26(8):754–758 is an important contribution that debunks the irrational therapies that have unofrtunately become very prominent in the age of the internet. Those who have a Facebook account will also know what I mean. I think this is compulsory reading for everybody so that they can beware charlatans and quack medicines that can cost lives. Remember that even Steve Jobs became a victim of such irrational therapies which may have cost him his life. I will publish this in several sections. References will appear in the last instalment. Cancer Quackery: The Persistent Popularity of Useless, Irrational Alternative’ Treatments by Barrie R Cassileth, Ian R Yarett, Laetrile, a chemically modified form of amygdalin and a naturally occurring substance found mainly in the kernels of apricots, is one of many bogus cancer ‘treatments’ from the 1980s. One of the earliest papers published by one of us (BRC) was entitled ‘After Laetrile, What...

Bir Chandra Manikya: Maharaja Of Tripura 1870-1896 It is not very well known that the early history of photography in India owes much to the rulers of the then kingdom of Tripura. Maharaja Bir Chandra Manikya, who incidentally was one of the first to acknowledge Rabindranath as a genius, was an accomplished photographer. He began to take daguerreotypes from the mid 1850s, but also moved with the times mastering the wet colloidion process and the platinum print as these techniques became available. He even started a Photographic Club in Agartala, his capital and held annual photography competitions in his palace. Bir Chandra was one of the greatest of the Manikya rulers of Tripura and was instrumental in the development of Agartala to a modern city and he also set up the Agartala Municipality. He used to occasionally send examples of his work to the then imperial capital, Calcutta and in 1991, the Journal of the Photographic Society of India reported that it was lucky for the winner...

One of India’s major sculptors, sadly largely forgotten today was Fanindranath Bose. Born on the first day of 1888, in Kolkata, Fanindranath had his intial training in the arts Calcutta before he moved to Britain to further his artistic aspirations. A short bio from internet sources to introduce this fascinating figure; “Fanindranath Bose’s name remains absent from the histories of the ‘New Sculpture’ Movement in Britain, yet his sculptures, training and connections suggest that he was a part of this late nineteenth/early twentieth century network of sculptors who were primarily concerned with reproducing the human body in bronze. Born in India, Bose was trained at the Jubilee Art Academy and the Calcutta School of Art before moving to Europe to pursue his ambition to become a sculptor. After failing to gain admittance to an Italian art academy or the Royal College of Art in London, Bose enrolled at the Board of Manufacturers School of Edinburgh. Scotland was to become Bose’s hom...

Sunil Ganguly died on Nabami during the just concluded Pujas. I will not go into the tasteless lack of gravity during his funeral, though I must admit that now I realize how sensible Saoli Mitra was to have organized the cremation of her father, Sambhu Mitra, before announcing his death to the world. This avoided the circuses that seem to accompany the death of cultural icons in Bengal. The fracas during Satyajit Ray’s funeral is still green in my memory. Be that as it may, I only want to record a discussion I had about his work with some friends and relatives during this time. It seems important to try to analyse why his novels were so popular and I will do it by trying to see what it was in his novel Purba Paschim that made it so significant. This novel, beloved of most if not all Bengalis records the life and times of a well off Hindu family based in eastern Bengal who have to move to Calcutta during Partition and their life and struggles. It encompasses a broad area, the prep...

It is always a wrench to leave Kolkata Airport to take the KL flight. However, often this departure has been preceded by rude taxi drivers, fatheaded security staff and expensive but lousy coffee in the airport lounge, so one can take it in one’s stride. However this time was different. For a change we spent a full week in Kolkata, that too during the Pujas. Kolkata is different during the Pujas. The traffic is smooth, the pedestrians are forced to keep to the pavements, the hawkers either go on leave or are removed from the pavements in many areas and of course the city is dressed up in the finery of the autumn festival. I have not been in Kolkata during the Pujas for something like a couple of decades. So, some of my memories had faded. However this time I was stuck anew with wonder at the creativity and hard work that goes into the organization of what must be one of the greatest shows on earth The pratimas were even better than my memories, the lighting and the pandals were min...

Mahalaya always brings with it the promise of the Durga Puja to follow less than a week away. There are many religious connotations to this day. It is the day given over for prayers for ancestors and there are many who crowd the Hooghly in Calcutta to bathe and offer the necessary prayers. However for us, in our younger days, Mahalaya meant the onset of the Pujas. And this was always heralded by the early morning Mahisasurmardini programme in All India Radio. There are many programmes that have the signature of AIR Calcutta, but this particular one is one that is perhaps the most popular and has lasted the longest. I am told that the programme originated in 1932. In the first few decades it was a live programme that was anchored by the legendary Birendra Krishna Bhadra. When we were kids it was rumoured that Birendra Krishna used to bathe in the Hooghly at 3 AM and then walk to the AIR studios to start the programme at 4.00 AM. Ever since I can remember, my father used to switch on...

One question that is exercising many minds in India today is that of Narendra Modi. Will he be the BJP candidate for Prime Minister or will he not? If so will he become the next Prime Minister or will he not? In connexion to this is also the question: Should he become Prime Minister or did his shenanigans during the Gujarat Riots make him unsuitable for the post? To my mind these questions should be in the forefront of all thinking people’s minds and should generate a sober debate. Instead we see the newspapers and the social media sites filled with a shrill abusive noise which only confuses the issue and leads to more abuse which is counterproductive because this is a debate which is necessary and vital and may be a game changer for India in the near future. To my mind the questions are three. 1) Is Modi all he is cracked out to be? Is he really the man who changed the face of Gujarat and if given a chance can change the face of India? 2) If so what about his record during the Gu...

When we were at school and which was when we last studied history formally, we were not taught too much about the history of southern India. India was for our history books the history of Northern India, divided neatly into the Ancient, Medieval and Modern periods. Political correctness was less prominent in those days; consequently these periods were also called the Hindu, Muslim and British periods of our history. The fact is however that the history of India was never so neatly divided. Muslim sultanates in the Northern parts coexisted quite comfortably with major Hindu kingdoms in the South. The North East was absent in such histories and the influence that India had on South East Asia was never mentioned. It was unfashionable to proclaim that India had exported its influence all over the Malay peninsula, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia the and the Indonesian archipelago. It was only when I came to live here in Malaysia that I began to l get a real glimpse of the scale of ...

This picture is of Vizzy ( Upper right), Amarnath ( lower right) and Amarnath and probably Merchant coming in to bat. Indian cricket has been no stranger to controversies. In our time we can remember Kapil Dev being dropped from the Calcutta test during the England tour in 1984 allegedly at Gavaskar’s behest, Mohibder Amarnat referring to the selectors as a bunch of jokers and of course the Saurav Ganguly /Greg Chappel imbroglio. However many of us do not know that Indian cricket was mired in controversies frrom its earliest days. One of the earliest omne took place in 1935 duringthe Inidian team’s secondl trip to England. Lala Amarnath or plain Nanik Amarnath as he was known then was sent back in disgrace from the tour even before the first Test was played. Let us set the background. Those were the days of the Raj. Intimations of mortality were evident, but most of the principal beneficieries of Empire were unaware of the fact. The Princes were still the bantam cocks, dancin...

Except for those of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies, Lal Bahadur Shashtri was a figure whom we knew little about. He was the little man with iron in his constitution, the man who succeeded Jawaharlal Nehru, honest to the core, the man who won the 1965 War with Pakistan. He was a man who seldom thrust himself to the stage; most of his work was from the shadows. But his death was anything but quiet. He thrust himself into attention in a way that has now been forgotten, but bears recalling. It was the night of 10/11 January, 1966. The place, the capital of the Uzbek SSR, Tashkent. The previous day had been a hectic one, but one that ended in triumph for this quiet, but steely statesman. President Ayub Khan of Pakistan and he had agreed to the terms which would end the War of 1965 and return conquered territory to their rightful owners. Pakistan’s bid to tie this to the future of Kashmir had been foiled and Prime Minister Kosygin of the then USSR had acted as the honest bro...

Final part of the article He felt the great need of determining the average duration of life in this country and recommended concrete measures for registration of births and marriages.20 He reverted to this subject again in 1867 when he published a paper entitled 'A Clinical Retrospect of Hospital Experience of Civil Medical Cases' dealing with a total of 7,125 indoor patients, 6,662 in the Medical College Hospital and 811 in Chitpore and Baitaconnah Hospitals and the 5,839 out-patients referred to in the earlier report.21 The average mortality in the three hospitals was 24.4 per cent and in the Medical College Hospital alone 22.7 per cent. He noted that for the four years commencing in 1850, the gross mortality rate was 16.45 per cent and for the similar period commencing in 1860, the rate was 25.32 per cent. The major causes of death were cholera, dysentery, smallpox, phthisis, remittent fever and intermittent fever. The death rates were as follows: cholera 46.6, dysentery...

Second Instalment of the article. Dr. Goodeve Chuckerbutty appeared at the first open competitive examination for appointment to the Covenanted service held during 8-11 January 1855. The Medical Times and Gazette published the full reports of this examination on the 10 February 1855. Twenty-two out of the twenty-eight candidates who appeared, passed, and George Marr was the first and S. C. G. Chuckerbutty second in order of merit.* He was now appointed to the Covenanted Medical Service as Assistant Surgeon (24 January 1855), and was the first Indian to win by sheer merit his way into this service that had until then been reserved for Europeans only. On his return to India, he was reappointed Assistant Physician to the Medical College Hospital. Only in view of his long experience in the medical service in India, he was exempted from probationary duty at the General Hospital and with a regiment (Lancet, 1855, i, 620). As an officer of the Covenanted Service, he successively beca...

Reproducing an article written By P C Sengupta and published in 1970 : Med Hist. 1970 April; 14(2): 183–191. The original article is not easily avialble now. I think this very well researched article will be a welcome addition to the series on the Calcutta Medical College in this blog. I will be breaking it up inot a number of instalments. Please also check out here , here , here , here and here . SOORJO COOMAR GOODEVE CHUCKERBUTTY: THE FIRST INDIAN CONTRIBUTOR TO MODERN MEDICAL SCIENCE by P. C. SEN GUPTA AN EDITORiAL note on the Progress of Science appeared in the Medical Times and Gazette, London, in 1852; this reads as follows: 'It is with sincere gratification that we today place before our readers an ably-written communication of considerable interest, by a native of our Indian empire. Dr. Chuckerbutty is, we believe, the irst native of that clime who has contributed to the progress of the science of medicine; and his friends-and he left many in this country-w...