AIIMSONIANS of UK & EUROPE

Our History

Early history, recent information, and the first Faculty member of AIIMS

The first national institute was the “All India Institute for Tropical Health, Hygiene & sanitation” in Calcutta created in the 1870s and designed to protect British troops from catching infectious diseases and dying from poor hygienic conditions and sanitation widely prevalent in India. The second such national institute was the “All India Institute for Mental Health Sciences” sited in Bangalore in 1933 later to become NIMHANS in 1974. Following the Tuskegee experiments in the US in the early 1930s, another such institute was originally planned under the Imperial government to be sited in Calcutta to learn about scientific aspects of human behaviour after performing various experiments on patients and comparing these outcomes during illnesses.
These ideas had become entrenched as part of the western Eugenic project from the pre-1900s designed to protect future generations of Europeans from ‘interbreeding with the locals’ and contracting genetic diseases causing physical infirmity. If they successfully breed, then it was considered imperative for society to prevent surviving generations from becoming ‘feebleminded’ as a result of interbreeding with the ‘inferior classes & races’. Learning about the scientific aspects of health using up-to-date research evidence and using modern methods of teaching for future practitioners was the driving force behind these initial plans for creating such research institutes.
However, during successive Bhore Commission inquiries in the early 1940s, it became obvious to the Imperial government that India would soon become independent, so all funding was withdrawn for any such centers especially investigating scientific research in India. Post-independence it fell upon Dr B C Roy, Chief Minister of Bengal to find money for this project as there was no such mention of central funding in India’s 1st 5-year plan.
The Safdarjung Hospital had been set up in 1942 as a Military Base Hospital for American troops and as most of the staff were American it soon became known as the ‘American Hospital’. As it was the only hospital in India providing so-called ‘tertiary care’ to the American forces since 1942, it also became the choice for senior civil staff of the Imperial government in Delhi. In 1947 it was renamed Safdarjung Hospital but most of the land surrounding this large hospital still belonged to Smt. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur.
In 1952 the New Zealand High Commissioner approached the Indian PM Sri J Nehru to leave the Non-Aligned Pact in exchange for Commonwealth Funding for health care. The Health Minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur decided to channel this money to fund AIIMS in Delhi. Still, no land had yet been found so the Foundation stone for AIIMS was laid in the grounds in her area where no buildings were nearby.
In 1953 the new Queen in Britain took over the Commonwealth, promising ‘this would bear no resemblance to the Empires of the past’ and that this was to be “an entirely new conception, built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty and desire for freedom and peace….. to that new conception of an equal partnership of nations and races I shall give myself heart and soul every day of my life…” etc. In this new spirit Smt. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur donated all her land near Safdarjung Hospital to the new AIIMS campus in Delhi (and also her property in Simla as a Guest House for AIIMS Faculty respectively).
In 1955 the building construction for AIIMS began in earnest. The Foundation stone was moved as a result of the campus of the Irwin Hospital in line with a decision to create two new medical schools in Delhi: one in the above hospital campus (Maulana Azad Medical School) and a second in the Lady Harding Hospital campus.
All 3 had a common entry system for the first 2 years, with only women entering the Lady Hardinge Medical College but staffing for the first few years was also common to all, the students intermingling amicably with each other as all their specialist clinical facilities were also shared quite freely. The Foundation Stone for AIIMS was subsequently retrieved from the MAMC campus almost a decade later (by Professor Keswani) and re-laid in the early sixties nearer the main entrance to the new buildings of the burgeoning new AIIMS campus.
In 1953 Professor Puliyur Krishnaswamy Doraiswamy was the 1st Faculty staff member appointed by Smt. Rajkumari Amrit Kaur specifically to lead AIIMS as Professor and Head of the Department on the recommendation of the selection panel headed by Professor Carl Ernest Taylor of John Hopkins University USA and Professor Govindswamy, Director of All India Institute of Mental Health and Allied Sciences of Bangalore (later becoming known as ‘NIMHANS’ in 1974).
In 1954 Professor P K Doraiswamy joined Safdarjung Hospital as the Medical Superintendent. He also headed the Orthopaedics department in AIIMS, appointed many other HODs, and set a very high benchmark for research, teaching, and practice in the new AIIMS. He later created the ‘Animal House’ on the AIIMS campus where he also personally conducted his ongoing research into the causation of birth defects following drugs given to male and female rabbits, guinea pigs, and rats for TB.
Professor Doraiswamy’s long-standing work on birth defects, especially spinal and limb deformities in newborns from drugs given to pregnant mothers had already been feted internationally for predicting the Thalidomide Disaster by decades. He was also the first AIIMSONIAN Faculty member to receive the prestigious Padma Shree Award.
Professor P K Doraiswamy appointed Professor PKC from Liverpool in 1956 as Associate Professor in Orthopaedics with a clear remit to set up Trauma facilities in AIIMS. Subsequently, Associate Professor Balu Sankaran and Assistant Professor S M Tuli joined Safdarjung Hospital while Assistant Professor Vishwakarma joined AIIMS under PKC. However, the trauma facilities in AIIMS failed to become a reality for a further half a century. It was not until after PKC’s death that the J P Narain Apex Centre for Trauma would be inaugurated in November 2006.
In the meanwhile, it was prophetic for Professor P K Doraiswamy to successfully anticipate this delay and proceed to create India’s first Orthopaedic center designed to provide medical care for victims of road traffic accidents in Safdarjung Hospital’s ‘Central Institute of Orthopaedics, Trauma and Rehabilitation’ along with Professor Balu Sankaran. He continued this work nationally as the Director General of Health Services and later until he died in 1974. Padma Shri Dr Ashok Rajagopal is the first recipient of Professor P K Doraiswamy International AIIMSONIANs Award in 2023 (in London).
Suresh Rao,
Vice President International Affairs (AIIMS & AUE)