Abstract
Very little has been written about the Indian general practitioners who were part of the medical world of Kenya and yet they were an absolutely vital part of the colonial (and for that matter, post-colonial) landscape of the country.2 Admittedly, in the early years of British rule the numbers who made up this cohort were small—just as they were for privately practising European doctors in the colony—but after 1920 Indians became a relatively organized and well-established part of the medical landscape. Furthermore, unlike most of the European private doctors that worked in colonial Kenya, Indian doctors commonly planted permanent roots in the country, remaining there with their families long after the transition to national rule. A large number of the doctors named in this chapter became the forefathers of a medical community of professional Indians, some of whose descendants still live in Kenya today.
During this quarter of a century, I have travelled almost all over the East African Territories overland and watched with great admiration the work of our Indian colleagues …. I have seen them patiently going through their work of bringing civilisation to these bush lands of Africa facing all the horrors of tropical diseases, such as Malignant Malaria, Blackwater fever, Plague, Dysenteries, Sleeping-sickness and host of others.1
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Notes
The only mentions that have been found in print are in Robert G. Gregory, South Asians in East Africa: An Economic and Social History 1890–1990, Oxford, Westview Press, 1993, pp. 217–27; Cynthia Salvadori, We Came in Dhows, Nairobi, Paperchase Kenya Ltd, 1996, has material relating to Dr Dias (Vol. I, p. 126); Dr Ribeiro (Vol. II, p. 22), Dr Bowry (Vol. III, p. 91), Dr de Sousa (Vol. III, p. 160). These cannot be counted as substantial analyses.
K.V. Adalja, ‘Thirty Two Years in General Practice in Nairobi’, East African Medical Journal, 36, 1959, pp. 442–8, 443.
Robert G. Gregory, India and East Africa: A History of Race Relations within the British Empire, 1890–1939. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1971. p. 217.
Anna Crozier, Practising Colonial Medicine: The Colonial Medical Service in East Africa, London, I.B. Tauris, 2007, p. 111.
Mridula Ramanna, ‘Indian Doctors, Western Medicine and Social Change, 1845–1885’, in Mariam Dossal and Ruby Maloni (eds.), State Intervention and Popular Response: Western Indian in the Nineteenth Century, Mumbai, Popular Prakashan Press, 1999, pp. 40–62.
Teresa Albuquerque, Goans of Kenya, Mumbai, Michael Lobo Publishers, 1999, p. 37; email, Kersi Rustomji to Harshad Topiwala 21 January 2007 regarding the River Road Clinic; Email Dr Serosh Sorabjee to Harshad Topiwala, 24 April 2007.
Freni Sorabjee, interview in Salvadori, We Came in Dhows, Paperchase Kenya, 1996, Vo1.I, p. 122; Isak Dinesen, Letters from Africa 1914–1931, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 313.
Angela Ribeiro, ‘Doctor on a Zebra’, in Salvadori (Ed.), We Came in Dhows, Paperchase Kenya, 1996, Vo1.II, p. 22.
S.D. Karve, Who’s Who in East Africa, 1963–64, Nairobi, Marco Surveys, p. 24.
Sana Aiyar, ‘Anticolonial Homelands across the Indian Ocean: The Politics of the Indian Diaspora in Kenya, ca. 1930–1950’, American Historical Review, 116.4, 2011, pp. 987–1013, 989.
Charles Jeffries, Partners for Progress: The Men and Women of the Colonial Service, London, 1949, p. 101.
de Sousa attacked the behaviour of hakims. A.C.L. de Sousa, Legislative Council Minutes, 27 July, 1937, Vol. 1, p. 71; Adalja, ‘Thirty Two Years’, p. 444; John Iliffe, East African Doctors: a History of the Modern Profession, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 121.
P.D. Patel, Correspondence ‘Social Services League’, East African Standard, 28 December 1935, p. 31; See Salvadori, Through Open Doors, p. 339 mentions the founding dates of SSL; Also see SSL dispensary photograph and information in R.O. Preston, Oriental Nairobi, Nairobi, Preston Publications, 1938, p. 318.
D. Seidenberg, Mercantile Adventurers, Delhi, New Age International Ltd., 1996, p.54.
Mary de Sousa, ‘The Treatment of Erosion of Cervix with Picric Acid’, Kenya Medical Journal, Vol.1.9, 1924, p. 281.
S.D. Karve, ‘An Experiment in Midwifery’, East African Medical Journal, 10, 1933–34, pp. 358–63, 358;
S.D. Karve, ‘Some Indian Methods of Midwifery’, East African Medical Journal, 11, 1934–35, pp. 286–7, 286.
K.V. Adalja, ‘Intramuscular versus Intravenous Quinine’, The Indian Medical Gazette, September 1935, p. 538; K.V. Adalja, ‘Ayurvedic Midwifery’, East African Medical Journal, 17, 1940, p. 142; [for reference to Adalja’s arguments about the benefits of Ayurvedic medicine] Andrew Hicks, ‘Forty Years of the British Medical Association (Kenya Branch)’, East African Medical Journal, 38.1, 1961, pp. 43–53, 46]; K.V. Adalja, ‘Acquired Haemophilia’, British Medical Journal, 10 April 1937, V1, p. 785.
G. Najmudean, ‘Ocular Manifestations in Syphilis’, East African Medical Journal, 8, 1931–2, pp. 316–22, 316.
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© 2015 Anna Greenwood and Harshad Topiwala
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Greenwood, A., Topiwala, H. (2015). Indian Private Doctors in Kenya. In: Indian Doctors in Kenya, 1895–1940. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137440532_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137440532_7
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