Reflections

There is often a hue and cry in the newspapers regarding the standards of the private medical colleges that are springing up like mushrooms after a monsoon rainfall in India , Nepal and Bangladesh. Some of the concern is no doubt justified, but to my knowledge the ones that really lack standards never have problems getting recognition from the Medical Councils. But that is by the by. However such concerns are not really new. As long as a 100 years ago, on the 30th of June 1908, the Calcutta “Statesman” carried a report about a “Dome “ named Poltu no less, who walked about the shops on Bowbazar Steet carrying a human arm and a skull, soliciting arms. Several shopkeepers quickly obliged him out of superstitious wonder, but he was soon picked up by the Police and jailed. It was suspected that he had obtained these specimens from the Anatomy Dissection Hall of the Calcutta Medical College, but this was proved false by the Senior Demonstrator of Anatomy who showed that the parts were so in...