CHAPTER XLII
HOSPITALS IN INDIA
"And, above the packed and pestilential town. Death looked down."
Kipling, Departmental Ditties, A Tale of Two Cities.
The first hospital in India appears to have been that at Goa, mentioned in Fryer's Travels. The first hospital at Madras was opened about 1664; the establishment of a hospital at Bombay was under discussion in 1670, but apparently it was not actually opened till 1676 ; the earliest hospital in Calcutta dates from 1707-08.
It will be most convenient to consider Indian hospitals geographically, taking each Presidency separately, in turn; the hospitals in each Presidency town being dealt with more or less in chronological order.
I.—Bombay.
The first suggestion of a hospital in Bombay seems to have been made in 1670. In the Swat Diaries, Vol. Ill, 1669-75, is given a Commission of instructions, dated Bombay, 5th March, 1669/70, showing that it had been determined to build a hospital in the town.
"Commission of instructions, Bombay, 5th March, 1669/70. The necessary tender wee have for the health of our people hath putt us on a resolution to build a small hospitall for entertainment of the sick and weake ye rather because experience hath prooved the naturall Disease of the Countrey to be infectious and therefore dangerous to the Garrison, where-fore wee have pitched on a convenient place for the hospitall and desire you to order it to be erected in a frugall way as may consist wth prudence, but though the Comply are at ye charge of building the hospitall, yet those yt receive the benefitt thereof must beare their owne expences otherwise not to be admitted."
Apparently the project of opening a hospital hung fire for several years. The Minutes of the Bombay Council, dated 23rd Nov., 1675, contained in Bombay Diaries, Vol. II, 1674-81, direct that two models, apparently rather what would now be
