"Ronald Ross to U N Brahmachari: Medical Research in Colonial India"

The turn to the twentieth century would be accompanied by serious investigations into the nascent realm of germ theory. India was an important colonial crucible of experimentation, particularly given the magnitude of epidemic diseases that was encountered in several of its cities. Yet even as attempts were undertaken to elucidate the active causative agents, be they bacterial (e.g. cholera) or microparasitic (malaria), as well as their vectors, which caused such a panic of disease, with such notable instances as the plague in Bombay that began in 1896, the role of the colonial government in monitoring and controlling outbreaks would receive mixed reactions from the subject population. A significant fraction of the officiating doctors redounded to the Indian Medical Service, staffed predominantly by Europeans, including many who had cut their teeth in India itself, a significant example being Sir Ronald Ross, the Nobel prize-winning discoverer of the means whereby the malarial parasite is transmitted. Alongside, however, were some Indian practitioners trained in Western medicine, whose efforts would be incalculably important in stemming the relentless spread of disease. As the twentieth century grew, so would their numbers and influence, signalled by a Presidential address in 1936 at the 23 rd session of the Indian Science Congress by one of their most distinguished members, Sir Upendranath Brahmachari, whose discovery of Urea Stibamine would save Indian lives in the thousands from the parasitic disease kala-azar.