Michael Cudmore Furnell

“ It is almost the first, if not the very first, building of any consequence in this continent which catches the rays of the rising sun, as if Southern India greeted the Glorious God of day—fabled also of old as the God of Learning—with a building consecrated to his beloved pursuits. Let us hope the influence of this University may be as beneficent and lasting, and that, like the luminary whose advent it daily greets, it may shed a never-failing stream of intellectual light over the land, chasing away the darkness of ignorance and superstition. ”

“ Are there not countless tracts of land in India waiting only industry and science to be thus converted into smiling gardens, amply repaying, as Nature always generously repays those who cultivate her? How cultivation affects even climates and calls down as it were rain from Heaven, I may cite to you the singular change which has come over that tract of land through which the Suez Canal has been cut. ”

“ But witnessing the ignorance and misery of mankind, he descended upon earth to cure their maladies and to instruct them in the means of preventing as well as curing diseases. This Dhanwantari became King of Kasi or Banares, the most holy city of the Hindoos—a city well worth the pilgrimage of any one, Hindoo or English, merely to gaze upon. Here he became so famous from his many cures, that, at last, a deputation of divine sages, or Munis, waited upon him to petition instruction in the divine art of Medicine. ”

“ London of the present day is most probably thirty or forty times the size it was then, containing nearly 4,000,000 of people, but it is now one of the healthiest cities of the world, and why ? simply because the people have learnt to wash, drain their houses and streets, and use comparatively pure water, for much remains to be done even now. But a wise regard for sanitation has borne ample fruit even of late years ; and great epidemics, such as at one time it was periodically visited with — and which were ascribed to the direct manifestation of divine wrath — have practically disappeared. ”

“ So our great nobility, our Dukes, Earls and others, even Royalty itself, are many of them admirable farmers, and take the liveliest practical interest in the development of all that concerns the soil. Here it seems to me you have a most splendid opening for the educated youths of this country, and as Government has instituted an Agricultural College in Madras (and if I had any voice in the matter I would make the teaching of agriculture compulsory in all our Normal schools) there is no excuse for some of you not following this science. ”

“ Each year sees an ever-increasing number of candidates for matriculation and graduation in Arts, but I fail to notice any increase for degrees in Medicine—a matter, I see, on which our gallant and respected Director of Public Instruction touched upon in his address last year. In twenty years the faculty of medicine has produced three Doctors, half-a-dozen Bachelors, and one Licentiate in a population numbering some 50,000,000 of people! ”

“ But what history indubitably teaches us is that, whereas in the dark ages Europe, as I said before, was one recurring scene of pestilences and famines, famines under improved means of cultivation have practically ceased to exist. Some harvests, of course, are less plentiful than others, and occasionally there is partial dis- tress, but famines such as we have had, are now, I may say, unknown. In the British Isles we have had no famine since 1847-48, when the potato failure caused such distress in Ireland. Now what was the course pursued by the people of England after this famine ? ”

“ The arms placed in your hands are the keen weapons of science ; like faithful soldiers keep them ever ready and bright by use. Be the peaceful warriors of Southern India, and though the combats you may go forth to wage are bloodless, and there is " no glorious pomp and circumstances of battle,"*^ yet are the victories, if possible, more splendid, the result to your country more important. If any among you take up the paths I have indicated^ medicine or agriculture, your foes will be pestilence and famine, and they slay myriads compared to the puny efforts of man's bloodiest wars. ”

“ What a strange subject this for reflection that we who pride ourselves in having quite lately overcome this prejudice of humanity — for it is only in the commencement of this present century the study of Anatomy has become legal in Great Britain — should have been anticipated by Natives of this country some three or four hundred years ago, and that I, a humble representative of the Western Aryan races, should stand here trying to persuade you to go back to your old ways of knowledge ! ”

“ Unfortunately, you have, at least many of you, long lost the value of this wisdom, and not only are your wells in many places less scrupulously clean, but your habits in all large religious gatherings of contaminating the streams and water-supplies, tends in this hot climate to originate and spread the dreadful epidemics for which India is so famous. Air as well as water falls under the immediate attention of the physician. It is more essential even that man should have pure air to breathe than pure water to drink. ”

“ The celebrated and learned Erasmus, not very long before, in a letter to a physician of Cardinal Wolsey, says of Englishmen, "There is a degree of uncleanliness and even filth "of which I could have formed no conception. The floors of the houses are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes which are occasionally removed, but underneath lies unmolested an ancient collection of beer, grease, fragments of fish, spittle, excrement of dogs, cats and everything that was nasty." Was it any wonder we had pestilence and plagues ? ”

“ What says Menu, your great Lawgiver : "Should a Brahmin touch a fresh human bone, he is purified by bathing, and if it be dry, by stroking a cow, or looking at the sun, having sprinkled his mouth duly with water." ”

“ But can I pass over the subject of food without making some allusion to the late dreadful famine which has visited this land ? Pardon me the wretched platitude, but without food we cease to exist; this is too self-evident, but what does not seem so self-evident, although equally true, is that man can, by his ingenuity and the right application of science, do much to avert, if not altogether prevent, these ca- lamitous visitations. ”

“ In the first place it deters the men who would honor and benefit medicine with their acquirements and social influence, seeking a career in this most useful and intellectual profession. All men of any worth are more or less ambitious of distinctions, and such men avoid medicine and overcrowd the ranks of other professions. ”

“ As the Principal of the Medical College, this fact is of singular interest to me, and it has often been present to my mind not only that the number of Native students who presented themselves to study Medicine, apart from those entering the service of Government, was singularly small, but that the Brahmins practically held altogether aloof. Medicine in Ancient India. What was the cause of this? If we turn to the ancient History of India, we find that medicine far from being a despised science, was one of the most honoured. ”

“ But we are not obliged to trust merely to the fable legends of Hindoo Mythology for the assertion that medicine in this country is an old and honored science. When the Greeks came to India with Alexander, they found, amongst the traces of civiliza- tion which raised their astonishment and admiration, the practice of medicine far advanced. ”

“ Medicine is not an honored calling amongst Englishmen. There is no use blinking the fact. It is the Cindrella amongst professions. It wears the poor clothing and does the drudgery, whilst its sisters. Law and Divinity, and in this country Arms and the Civil Service, are clad in purple and fine linen and obtain all the honors. You hear it called an ^' honorable profession,^^ a ^' noble " profession, but this alludes to its work not to its rewards. No .English physician, ever so famous, was ever ennohhd. ”

“ We pray that you will bestow upon us a work to instruct us in the causes, the nature and cure of diseases : for retaining health and for promoting the welfare of the soul in another world. Like scholars we come to receive the information from you." The King-Doctor's answer was favorable. Susruta "Your wishes shall be granted," replied Dhanwantari, and one of the sages, Sasruta, son of Visamitra, a contemporary of Rama, was chosen to be the person to be instructed in medicine. ”

“ In this country no English physician has ever been deemed worthy a seat in the Legislative Council. If the English gods churned the ocean for lost treasures, I am afraid it's not a '^learned Physician^' they would bring up ”

“ Is it not possible, and even probable that well-directed industry in planting forests, damming our rivers, opening up ii-rigation works and making tanks, would thus beneficially change our climate in Southern India, and avert our Rain Famines ? ”

“ Floating in the atmosphere are myriads of contaminatijig germs against which knowledge may defend us ; and simple contrivances of admission or exclusion of certain winds may make all the difference in this country of health or sickness in a household. ”

“ Again he writes : "Those men who, in ignorance of the human frame, venture to make it the subject of their experiments are the murderers of their species." Charaka Charaka, who in the opinion of some is even more ancient than Sasruta, writes : "A Practitioner should know all the parts of a body, both external and internal, and their relative positions with regard to each other ”