It Is As It Was !!

Just after the Golden 50th Year celebrations Of our beloved Bangalore Medical College, a bunch of us , just wanted to go down memory lane once last time.

To me the old PPC block, the sweaty old mens gymnasium, the old biochem labs , dissecting theatres and physiology labs were the most interesting.

So we went ahead and discovered:

PPC Block : Exists only in name, the Library and administrative sectors have taken over.

Anatomy Block: The old dissection lab is now a museum (same stuff and dusty), the lab has now shifted to the previously dilapidated section behind the old tennis courts. A new building now houses it. There are 150 students per batch, 15 per specimen. I could not resist the smell of formaldehyde and so we checked it out. The place is a lot cleaner, the tables aluminum, new lockers are added and the custodians have some modern equipment! Like a power saw !! I found a few old dusty histology work binders partly completed by the present live denizens. Their work was just the same.

Biochemistry: The lab is just the same. Remember the glass pipette... remains. A worthy specimen with its half broken tip but clean!!! was discovered , inspected and carefully put back. The ambiance was too precious for me to disturb. How about Benedicts solution ( to check blood sugar) or picric acid or the Bunsen burners, they too were there except the tubing is new. By the way remember the test tube holders, I found mine from the past, no it did not have my name, but I distinctly recollect, the thing had no clamp. The test tube was held gingerly by just the tongs! The reagents bottles were all dust covered and without tops. I gave two bottles my last gingerly caress , cleaned up and precisely placed them where I found them... and moved on. On the chalk board the famous algorithm " How to detect a chemical solution" still remains.

Experimental Physiology Lab: The frog thing is gone (Thanks to Meneka Gandhi and her animal stuff). The old smoke drums are still there, only now moved to the pharmacology lab. Think about the twitch recordings; I know my frog prep always failed, or the frog escaped before being pithed. The lab is the same. A recent set of results from a exam was posted (Max marks 35 ; results ranged from 31 to 13). The hematology lab upstairs is modern with sets of tube lights than sunlight (our days) to brighten the microscopes. " Sallis method" remember is and still is used to check Hb. Students are expected to know this as per present curriculum.

Main entrance: The old records office on the ground floor is gone. The hall way is now big, but, the old Hippocratic oath still hangs over. It never fails to impress as much as it did the first day in 1971 I walked into BMC to pay my first fees, only to gaze at those words, and hope I would ever live up to it.

The 45 minutes I spent doing this with Adisesh, Shantaram, Kumaraswamy, Krishna Reddy, BS Viswanath and Anantakishan was priceless. Thanks guys !

Lolly.