'Regularly brought up medical men': Nineteenth-century Grant Medical College graduates, medical rationalism and leprosy

Abstract

This article deals with a hitherto overlooked aspect of Western medical education in nineteenth-century colonial India, namely the initiation of the early generations of Indian medical students into the principles and practice of 'rational' enquiry. The manner in which recipients of the instruction subsequently demonstrated their entry into the 'rational' world in the field of therapeutics and their responses to the germ theory of disease is explored with respect to four graduates of the Grant Medical College, Bombay. The approach they adopted when confronted with two major issues—treatment and causation-thrown up by leprosy provides the vehicle for the study. It is concluded that Western medicine-trained Indian physicians were not passive receptacles of the received 'rational' wisdom. They interpreted, utilised and exploited it in highly individualistic and revealing ways.