Madras miscellany

A forgotten plaque

THE WRECKERS are having a whale of a time at the General Hospital as they demolish a bit of heritage, the oldest and biggest block of the hospital, the first floor, core of which could well date to 1772 when a hospital was first founded on this site. The PWD in its wisdom condemned a building that s ehould be on any Heritage List and demolition has followed almost immediately, with the views of none connected with heritage sought, not even those of the CMDA's Heritage Committee. That being par for the course in such cases, I don't propose to dwell on this sad aspect of what's happening not only in Park Town but everywhere else in the city as well.

I do, however, hope that a plaque in this building has been noticed and saved for re-installation in one of the two seven- storeyed blocks scheduled to come up here. The commemoration stone featured here was installed in 1953 to mark the Golden Jubilee of the discovery of "the causative organism" of Kala Azar, the Black Fever, by a doctor in the hospital, Major Charles Donovan. Kala Azar, first recognised in 1824 as a specific deadly disease, claimed 750,000 lives in India in the three years after that identification and continued to be a dreaded killer till the early 20th Century.

In a curious coincidence, reflecting the lack of coordination in scientific research at that time, another British Army doctor, William Leishman, who had served in India and made a contribution to diagnosing malaria, published in London in 1903 a paper identifying the Kala Azar parasite. Unbeknownst to him, Donovan was saying the same thing in Madras at the time and sent a sketch of the parasite he'd discovered to Ronald Ross, by then famous as the doctor who had made the link between species Anopheles and malaria in 1897.

Ross, like Donovan, had belonged to the Madras Medical Service and had served in Madras before moving on to Hyderabad and his discovery. By now back in England, he realised that what Leishman and Donovan had discovered were one and the same parasite and he was eminent enough by then to have the 'christening' of the parasite done by him accepted by all. He named it 'Leishmania donovani' after the two investigators and for a long time the parasites were popularly called 'Leishman-Donovan' bodies. But Donovan's news having taken three months in transit to reach London, the delay resulted in Donovan's name getting second place.

Donovan first joined the Madras General Hospital in 1899, as Personal Assistant to the Superintendent General. He was Second Physician General of the Hospital and teaching in the Madras Medical College at the time he made the discovery. In 1905, he was appointed Physician General of the Hospital and Professor of Physiology at MMC where he had taught for some years. The simultaneous nature of his discovery caused considerable controversy till Ross stepped in and put matters to rest. No less controversial was Donovan's view that it was bed bugs that transmitted the disease. It was to be 35 years more before sand flies were identified as the villains of the disease. Controversy or not, Donovan's contribution was significant and commemoration deserved in the Havelock Ward of the Madras General Hospital where he did his research. It would be sad if that memorial vanished with the march of construction.

The college in a jail

I DIDN'T THINK I would have to refer to the Old Town Wall again so soon (Miscellany, March 27), but the discovery of a tunnel in a college campus recently by the PWD has brought me back to the subject again.

While reports of the findings refer to the discovery having been made at Bharati Women's College "in north Chennai," they do not locate the site further.

The college is, in fact, at the corner of what was called Popham's Broadway and Old Jail Road. And it was along Old Jail Road that the northern stretch of the Old Town Wall ran.

An underground passage built in the 18th Century for supplies and reinforcements to reach the defenders in time of threat is certainly a possibility - but any 10th Century bricks found, as reported, would certainly need a lot of explaining.

Easier to explain is the name "Old Jail Road." The college, in fact, occupies Madras's first civil jail, and many of the jail's buildings still remain on campus, used as classrooms and offices. This jail had earlier been located in the bastions of the Old Town Wall.

It was moved to the premises where the college now is in 1804, Sheriff Edward Atkinson having first suggested the building of a new jail here in 1793.

With the Central Jail being built in the middle of the 19th Century, the Civil Jail, as the Old Jail became known when it shifted, gradually lost its importance, though prisoners were housed in it till Independence.

Shortly after Independence, the Congress Prachar Sabha became its occupants, establishing here a cottage industries training centre. The training centre lost direction after Kamaraj's death and the Government reclaimed the campus in 1964.

A part of the expanding Central Polytechnic Institute and a new women's college were then moved in here. When the last departments of the CPI moved to Adyar in 1968, the college became the Bharati Women's College and heirs to the Old Jail.

A romantic notion would be that the tunnel recently discovered might have been an escape route for prisoners. But whoever heard of bricks in escape tunnels?

The way to archival research

THE ONLY publishing house owned by a university in India is a foreign-owned one, Oxford University's. Indian universities and private colleges do the occasional publishing, but have no systematic publishing programme. The result is little or no publication of the research work of students or faculty. And a total dependence on the findings of researchers from abroad.

Recent publications of this ilk by Oxford University Press include a book on the activities of Tranquebar's Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, the first Protestant missionary in India, and another on the Madurai Mission of De Nobili, Beschi and others. Neither has looked at the contributions these missionaries made to India apart from their religious work. The lack of attention paid to subaltern studies in our universities and autonomous colleges has contributed to such lacunae. It's time universities showed the way with publishing programmes focussed on such studies.

Researchers working on theses and manuscripts for publication will find a recent publication invaluable. Compiled by Dr. M. Sundara Raj of the Tamil Nadu Archives, A Manual of Archival Systems and the World of Archives, contains an immense amount of information about the major holdings of archives in India and abroad. The National Archives of India, 17 State Archives, 37 Archives of other countries and ten special archives are featured in this commendable publication. Here is a treasurehouse of information on telling you who has got what if you plan to do research on the kinds of books I've been talking about earlier.

S. MUTHIAH

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Twin passions
Next     : Between you & me