Though India boasted of Charaka, a first century physician and Susruta as the father of surgery, medical science went into decline because surgery was considered a menial work and left to people from the lower caste to perform, Prof DP Roy from the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), Mumbai, said, quoting eminent researchers while delivering a popular lecture at the SOA University here.
The talk was on the subject “Role of experiments in the progress of science: lessons for our history”.
Quoting eminent physician Dr MS Valiathan, Prof Roy said while Susruta felt dissection of cadavers was indispensable for students of surgery who required to learn from experience and observation, the society strongly opposed the idea on the ground that touching a corpse would defile an upper caste person.
This, according to Acharya PC Roy, eminent scientist and entrepreneur, discouraged the handling of the lancet leading to decadence of surgical procedures in India though other castes, viewed as low in the social hierarchy, practiced it, he said. Susruta’s skill to repair chopped off noses was accidentally discovered in Pune by a British doctor in the 18th century, Prof Roy said.
Dr Scott, who lived in Mumbai, wrote to an official of the East India Company in Pune to ascertain the veracity of the ‘nose repair’ report as such surgery was unknown in Europe till then. The report by the official, Findley confirmed that such a surgery had actually taken place with a man from the lower caste performing it on a man who had his nose chopped off, Prof Roy said. This man had used an old razor to dissect a flap from the patient’s forehead, freshened the edges of the nasal defect and applied the flap “without the aid of stitches, sticking plaster or bandages.” The flap healed and “an adhesion has seemingly taken place in every part,” the official’s report said.
This report was published in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” of london in 1794 which caught the attention of a surgeon Dr JC Carpue who performed such an operation for the first time in the west and published a paper in 1816. The relegation of the sciences to the lower castes made the professions hereditary, resulting in the intellectuals withdrawing from active participation in these sciences. “The spirit of inquiry gradually died out among the nation and India bade adieu to experimental and inductive sciences,” Prof Roy said.
He said India was ahead of other nations in field of metallurgy being a major exporter of ferrous metals. Ghaznavid and Ghorian invaders destroyed Indian iron industry in 11th and 12th centuries and took away thousands of skilled metal workers as slaves to bolster their own armament production, Prof Roy said.