RAJA RAVI VARMA BIRTH ANNIVERSARY: Raja Ravi Varma is the celebrated Indian painter widely known for the unison of the European realistic style of painting with Indian imagery. Known as ‘Father of Modern Indian Art’, he is the greatest painter in the history of India. He is renowned for painting both – portraits, such as "Ramanadha Rao and Son” and paintings of Indian mythology, such as "Riddhi Siddhi”.
OVER the past two weeks I have related the fascinating and inspiring true stories of two Scottish women doctors who were awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal, the highest form of recognition for public service in India during the latter years of the British Raj. King George V, in his capacity as Emperor of India, awarded Gold Medals to Dr Isabel Kerr and Dr Margaret Ida Balfour for their immense pioneering contributions to Indian medicine, the former for her work on leprosy and the latter mainly for her sterling and successful efforts to improve medicine for Indian women. Today I will complete this trilogy with the story of Dr Mary Ronald Bisset who also received the Kaisar-i-Hind Gold Medal and who, like Kerr and Balfour, is revered more in India than in her native country of Scotland.
ONE of Scotland’s many unsung medical heroes is Dr Isabel Kerr, whose pioneering work in the treatment of leprosy is often forgotten in her native land but not in India where her memory is revered. It was in this week of 1932 that Dr Kerr died at the age of 57. She had devoted the last 25 years of her life to nursing sick people in India, particularly those afflicted with leprosy, and is reckoned to have saved hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s Disease, has been a curse on the human species for thousands of years. The name comes from two Greek words that together mean scaly-skinned man – serious skin lesions are a common symptom of leprosy.