Upendranath Brahmachari - a pioneer of tropical diseases

The pioneer of the tropical medicine Upendranath (also written as Upendra Nath) Brahmachari was the first Indian to be nominated for the Medicine and Physiology Nobel Prize. He was also proposed for the coveted Fellowship of the Royal Society of London. Upendranath Brahmachari was associated with most of the scientific institutions in Calcutta, including the Asiatic society of Bengal, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Sciences, University of Calcutta and Indian Museum Calcutta. Brahmachari Research Institute was also founded by him. Other prestigious positions included: President of the Society of Biological Chemists in India, Founding Member and Vice President of the Physiological Society of India, Founding Fellow of the National Institute of Sciences of India, President of the Indian Science Congress Association, and President of the Indian Chemical Society. Brahmachari discovered a new form of kala-azar; its name was proposed in various forms, as post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis, dermal leishmaniasis (Brahmachari), post-antimonial dermal leishmaniasis (Brahmachari), and Brahmachari’s dermal leishmaniasis. A new species of mosquitoes was also named after him. Brahmachari devised a special apparatus for the intravenous injection of metallic antimony. It is not an exaggeration to say that he was the first Indian to produce pharmaceutical drugs, which were based on Western techniques. His most famous invention was the making of urea stibamine, a medicine for the treatment of kala-azar. In the words of the British doctor H. E. Shortt, “overnight, a death rate of 90% was transformed into a cure rate of 90%.” The medicine saved millions of lives within India and abroad. The present book gives some important facts of Brahmachari’s life and a short review of his scientific works.