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26 May 2020 | 05:06am IST

The Goan doctor and the plague

Selma Carvalho

It is difficult to think of anything else besides the pandemic these days. The word dominates our lives as we bunker in our homes. The last pandemic was in 1918, the world was ravaged by what became known as the Spanish Flu. A 100 years have passed by, and at least two generations have lived without the fear of an outbreak which defies local containment. The centuries preceding, however, were at the mercy of unmitigated viral transmission producing devastation across countries. It was during one such deadly infestation that a Goan doctor would insert himself into British colonial history.

In 1899, the British camped at the foot of the Kikuyu hills, to build a depot for the railway line connecting the East African coast to the hinterland. It was an uninspiring piece of scrub land prone to disease but it would eventually become the township of Nairobi and the capital of Kenya. By 1905, about 70 Goan clerks worked in Nairobi for the Uganda Railway. They lived in the railway quarters built of corrugated iron and wood. The houses were raised about 3 feet from the ground on pillars of iron or stone. In actual fact, the houses lacked adequate sanitation and drainage. During the wet season, the quarters were submerged in water leaving them susceptible to pneumonia and lung disease.

In 1902, the deadly bubonic plague once again arrived in Nairobi. At first the railway quarters did not suffer casualties, but then as is often the case with epidemics, the most vulnerable, those doing manual work were the worst affected, among them were the Goans, A. P. de Souza and P. da Cunha, both employed as fitters by the railway. Eventually the plague would result in 19 deaths, a high mortality rate for a town whose population was a mere few thousands. (A 1909 census put the number of Goans in Nairobi as 591.) This outcome would have been far worse had it not been for its early detection and warning by Dr Rozendo Ayres Ribeiro.

Ribeiro, after graduating from the Escola Médico-Cirúrgica in Panjim, ran a struggling medical practice in Ponda, Goa. At 28, he borrowed money from a friend and set sail for Mombasa which he found to be unendurable, afflicted as he was with frequent bouts of malaria. After a year there, he arrived in Nairobi in 1900 and set up his practice in a tent and then a shelter constructed from packing cases in the Indian bazaar.

From his vantage point, he noticed a suspicious sickness occurring in the bazaar coinciding with a high incidence of rat mortality. He warned the civic authorities about the possibility of bubonic plague affecting his patients. The British consulted a Dr Lott from neighbouring German East Africa, who suspected the plague might have travelled from India on gunny bags of rice or cotton waste from Karachi. The British burned the bazaar to the ground to contain the plague and in the process, Ribeiro’s practice too went up in flames. For his early warning, the British compensated Ribeiro with 16 acres of land where he built a dak bungalow. The Campos Ribeiro Road was jointly named after him and J. M. Campos, another prominent Nairobi Goan.

Besides Ribeiro, two other Goan doctors played a major role in the early detection and eradication of plague. Dr Acacio Gabriel Viegas had a practice in Mandvi, Bombay, and in 1896 sounded the alarm for bubonic plague in Bombay and identified rats are its carriers. Not only was Viegas an icon in the medical field but he played an integral role in the civic affairs of Bombay as head of the Bombay Municipal Corporation. A statue in front of the Framjee Cowasjee Institute and a street in Dhobitalao named in his honour commemorates his service to the city. In Zanzibar, Dr Manuel Francisco de Albuquerque, another legendary medical and civic figure was awarded the Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar for his service during the frequent plagues afflicting Zanzibar in the early 1900s.

The question arises why Goan doctors were uniquely positioned to detect plagues? For one thing, they were familiar with the symptoms and prevalence of tropical disease but more importantly their private practices treated patients in disadvantaged areas. Dr Viegas operated in the Port Trust area, a poor neighbourhood with drains silted up or blocked with night soil making it prone to disease.

Dr Ribeiro operated from the Indian bazaar, where he and his assistant C. Pinto compounded prescriptions by the light of a kerosene lamp, sometimes accepting chickens in lieu of payment. Indians were often made scape goats for the frequent plagues in Nairobi. In 1902, medical officer Dr H. E. Mann insisted that ‘every effort should be made to keep the Indians (railway coolies, shopkeepers) away from the Europeans’. In his experience, Indians had proved to be so dirty that it was impossible to keep ‘them and their surroundings in a sanitary condition’.

The contribution of Goan doctors in the 1900s cannot be overstated. Not only were they medical practitioners but they took seriously their role as custodians of Goan society. They ushered in a golden era of philanthropy assuming responsibility for educational institutions, welfare associations, and social clubs. After this pandemic abates, we would do well to look upon these individuals as role models in creating new futures for ourselves.

(The writer is the Author of Goan Pioneers of East Africa)