[Reader-list] Re: Goan migrants and medicine

[rochelle pinto]

A dominant note that weaves through the writings of non-elite Goans is the resistance to the medical profession. The discipline and institutions of medicine began to represent elite dominance in the realm of education and within professions. In part, this derives from the fact that the earliest western medical institution to be set up in Asia was the Goa Medical College. Consequently, prior to the twentieth century, the Catholic elite in particular furnished several doctors. In fact, in a prosperous family that had generated sons, it was customary to hand one over to the medical profession, one to law, one to the church, and, stereotypes and popular lore claim, the idiot son to business. In Bombay as well, Goans constituted a substantial percentage of students emerging from Grant Medical College � an institution that Hindu Goans could also access with ease, though by this time, discrimination within educational institutions in Goa had diminished.

 The financially strung out migrants were dismayed to find that they had to pay money they could scarcely afford for medication. Whatever their actual experience of allopathic medicine was, it is evident that the profession of Goan doctors, to them, was nothing but an illustration of how the rich proverbially grew wealthy by playing on the misfortunes of the poor.  The sight of these sleek, educated compatriots appears to have generated sustained irritation. Through songs, pamphlets, plays, and incidental diversions from the main plot of novels, migrant writers found a way to ridicule or criticise doctors. S.G. D�Souza, also known as Karachiwala, (Karachi was a destination for migrants), published a play called Gabruchi Sasumai (Gabriel�s Mother-in-law) that contains a long song, elaborating the uselessness of doctors. D�Souza instead enumerated the many local remedies available for diarrhoea, constipation, nausea, and cold that could be had from chamar communities, grandmothers,
 barbers, fisherwomen, etc. Practically every community had its own home grown speciality remedies for specific illnesses that, according to the writer, were far more efficacious than the fake medicine through which doctors in Bombay extracted money from the poor. While novels would warn readers against going to quacks, D�Souza cast aspersions on the profession in itself, alleging that the medical licence was a means to prevent the barber from practising, and the setting up of medical institutions, a way in which to exclude the doctors of yore. 

 The plague in particular, was historicized repeatedly, for the suffering it caused to the migrants, and for the deep corruption of the city�s doctors (all Goan in these narratives), that it made visible.  While these critiques range from those that claim to be entirely factual, to those that are expressly rhetorical for the purpose of expansiveness, none can be discounted when placed within the range of writing that almost insistently made the elite doctor the focus of criticism. While a large part of the writing of Goan migrants spelt out class antagonisms against priests, teachers, and government officials, perhaps the relationship of necessary dependency between patient and doctor, and therefore, the tangible sense that a fundamental need was being exploited, drew the attention of writers. 


 

 


 


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