A long and deep incision …
Happy New Year!
As we step into a new year, it is a good time to look back at a time nearly 200 years ago and know about a nearly forgotten hero, a pioneer of medical education in India, Pundit Madhusudan Gupta. In the words of the great philanthropist Drinkwater Bethune, “The 10th day of January, 1836, a day forever memorable in the annals of Bengal, was the great day, on which Madasuden Gupta rose up superior to the prejudices of his earlier-education, and boldly flung open the gates of medical science to his countrymen.” He not only was the first Indian to dissect a human dead body, he had been an extraordinary student, teacher, researcher and author on medical science and education in India. Bold personalities like Madhusudan Gupta took tremendous risk upon themselves to build the tough bridge that helped the nation to cross over from the indigenous to the modern medical science, a trajectory which is more fashionable of late to be traversed in reverse direction.
As always, we curate from the public domain to present this remarkable story.