Author: Dr Kiran Kumbhar

I am a medical doctor and health policy graduate, and currently PhD student at Harvard University (history of science). I write primarily about public health and the history and culture of medicine in India.
Culture & Life · History · History of Medicine · Medicine & Doctors · Recommended movies, books etc.

How did doctors become powerful – Arguments from Paul Starr’s ‘The Social Transformation of American Medicine’ – Part 1

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Sociologist Paul Starr’s book ‘The Social Transformation of American Medicine’ is among the most important expositions of the evolution of medical practice and the biomedical profession in the USA. It was published in 1982 and won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. It is quite a thick book and contains several crucial arguments about… Continue reading How did doctors become powerful – Arguments from Paul Starr’s ‘The Social Transformation of American Medicine’ – Part 1

History · History of Medicine · Medicine & Doctors · Politics · Public health

Why India’s founders championed a well-funded government-led healthcare system

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This appeared in The Wire on 28 January 2020. Here is the article. I wrote this mainly in response to the Indian government’s gradual and timid abandonment of the universal health care goal for its people, with the latest setback being the plans to hand over our country’s civil hospitals to private agencies. “Immediately after… Continue reading Why India’s founders championed a well-funded government-led healthcare system

What are the origins of the unique cultural parades during India’s Republic Day celebrations?
Culture & Life · History · Politics

What are the origins of the unique cultural parades during India’s Republic Day celebrations?

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We are so used to seeing the interesting Republic Day parades since childhood that we hardly pause to think where and how exactly all of that originated. The bare minimum we are told is that the revered Constitution of India came into effect on January 26 1950, and the celebrations commemorate that event. While that… Continue reading What are the origins of the unique cultural parades during India’s Republic Day celebrations?

Cinema & Bollywood · History · History of Medicine · Medicine & Doctors · Public health

How B&W Bollywood has preserved a multi-hued snapshot of India’s public health story

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This was published on 28 Sep by the Wire India, here. Below are some excerpts: “TB was, and is, a formidable enemy but the foremost public health enemy in the early and mid-1900s in India, accounting for almost a quarter of all deaths every year, was malaria. Observers used terrible superlatives to describe it, such… Continue reading How B&W Bollywood has preserved a multi-hued snapshot of India’s public health story

Being a good ‘doctor’, not just a good ‘clinician’: Reading recommendations for MBBS students
Medicine & Doctors · Public health · Recommended movies, books etc.

Being a good ‘doctor’, not just a good ‘clinician’: Reading recommendations for MBBS students

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As I came to appreciate after countless hours in darkened lecture halls, the biomedical view of disease looks piercingly through a patient toward some essential, objective, solid reality of biology—and yet in doing so it loses, like an X ray, almost any sense of flesh of the person. – Chris Feudtner, ‘Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and… Continue reading Being a good ‘doctor’, not just a good ‘clinician’: Reading recommendations for MBBS students

Why reading is as important a parenting duty as any other
Culture & Life · History · Recommended movies, books etc.

Why reading is as important a parenting duty as any other

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We are almost never introduced properly to one of the most important skills one needs in a complex, and now increasingly lies-filled, social world: critical thinking. What follows is excerpted from a post I wrote on Quora in answer to a general question What is it that Indian parents are collectively doing wrong? This answer… Continue reading Why reading is as important a parenting duty as any other

Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital, 1921, Women students in a laboratory [Wellcome Collection] A short history of Delhi’s Lady Hardinge Medical College, with pictures
History · History of Medicine · Medicine & Doctors

A short history of Delhi’s Lady Hardinge Medical College, with pictures

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Lady Hardinge Medical College, located in the heart of New Delhi, is one of the premier medical institutions in the country. Established in 1916, it recently celebrated a centenary of existence. The seeds of its foundation, however, lie in the late 1800s, when the British colonial government began to take some reluctant interest in providing… Continue reading A short history of Delhi’s Lady Hardinge Medical College, with pictures