The Government of India and Scientific Medicine

Abstract

SIR LEONARD ROGERS'S recent presidential address to the Indian Science Congress at Bombay is a forcible protest against the long conflict between scientific enthusiasm and official apathy. The benefits conferred on long-suffering humanity by scientific investigation have strangely not sufficed to remove this dull resistance. Twenty years ago the present writer made a note in the visitors' book at the leper station of Almora to the effect that no systematic investigations were being made in India into the terrible disease leprosy. It is true that individual workers here and there in India, among them Sir Leonard Rogers, have carried on researches, but what concerted efforts has the Government of India made towards stamping out the disease, and where are the leprosy laboratories with their staffs of trained investigators? The cause and mode of transmission of elephantiasis and allied conditions are known, but what has been done towards mapping out,the distribution of these diseases, making a survey of the mosquitoes known to transmit them, and eradicating these mosquitoes? Again, are the investigations carried on in India in respect of malaria at all commensurate with the magnitude of the problem? Has kala-azar, one of the deadliest of, diseases, been systematically attacked except by the enterprise of commercial companies? We are aware that a few commissions have investigated and reported on the epidemic outbreaks of this disease, but more than that is required, viz. patient, systematic research. Fortunately, this hitherto incurable disease appears to be now readily curable by tartar emetic, and if research can discover the mode of transmission of the disease the possibility of its extermination is great.