SOLOMON VICTOR-SURGEON OF THE HEART
Posted by bmhegde on 1
Life of Solomon Victor, one of India’s greatest cardiac surgeons, is a saga following the dictates of the Thirukural.
"What good is a man's knowledge unless it prompts him
to prevent the pain of others as if it were his own pain?"
Thirukural (Verse 513)
While he was at the helm of affairs at the Madras Medical College, Solomon realized that the poor and the downtrodden did not have any one to help them in this world. He left service and started his won Heart Institute to help the poor village and slum kids with heart defects and valve diseases. India has millions of them. While there are many who proclaim to the world that they help the poor, hardly any one is doing that in the area of cardiac surgery. Poor Solomon did not realise that this world is very, very unjust. Solomon was not worldly wise in this treacherous monetary economy where justice is the convenience of the powerful and justice is, in fact, injustice.
He wanted to help those poor children but, soon ran out of money to run his hospital where more surgeries were done free for the poor than for the rich and the powerful. He also started to detect these diseases in school children. Soon he realized that these children had many other illnesses killing them. He went after those also in a big way and established an organization to do that under his leadership. All this ruined him financially. He was forced to close that hospital but continued to do his good work elsewhere under very difficult financial conditions. If there was one poor cardiac surgeon anywhere in the world it was late Solomon Victor because he really helped the poor and the downtrodden unlike any other that I have known.
Solomon was a brilliant undergraduate student in the 1950s Stanley Medical College, Madras where I had known him intimately. He passed every examination topping the list, eventually bagging the best outgoing studentship of his batch. Barring the Rama Rao Gold medal in anatomy, he got most of the medals and awards. As an intern he was considered the most diligent. I once overheard our dear teacher, late Prof. R.S.Rajgopal, remark that he had never seen an intern more meticulous in his work than Solomon. In addition to his scholastic excellence he was a great musician and a humane doctor.
No college function would be complete without Solomon playing on his violin. A very good friend, an excellent doctor, a humane colleague, cardiac surgeon with a lion’s heart and ladies fingers and much more, Solomon was also a great researcher, a trait he carried with him all through his career. Bedside research for him was to have a problem in his head and go as far away from his head as possible to get an answer. He was able to take cardiac surgery to greater heights in India because of this inquisitiveness. He lived by the Hippocratic Oath that he took on the day he graduated from the Madras University in letter and spirit. He practised medical humanism of the highest order. His handwriting was a pleasure to read: it was better than print. He was a great photographer. His intra-cardiac, peri-operative photographs are good enough to fill a whole new cardiac museum.
While Solomon continued his post graduation in Madras going on to do his general surgical MS and his M.Ch in Cardiothoracic surgery with great merit, I had to leave Madras as I was, by then, declared a non-Madrasi, thanks to the wily politicians trying to split the country on the basis of language! I had missed his company for a number of years till we again met in London at the National Heart hospital. It so happened that we were both studying for our MRCP examination, he as a cardiac surgeon after his FRCS from Scottish and English Royal Colleges, training under the doyen of cardiac surgery in Britain, Donald Ross. In fact, Solomon was a part of the team of Ross, also a South African by birth, which performed the second heart transplant in the world after the first by Christian Bernard in South Africa. Solomon used to be Donald’s pet student.
By then Solomon had his life partner in Suneeti who later became India’s crusader against AIDS. She still fights this menace to human kind. She was a microbiologist by training. I have known Suneeti better as a good cook as she used to prepare excellent meals for us at the end of a day’s hard work and study. Hers was a home away from home. Once again we parted company as Solomon went back to Madras and I came to Mangalore. I must hasten to add here that Solomon, probably, was the first Indian cardiac surgeon who was also a fully qualified cardiologist with his MRCP (Edinburgh) and later FRCPE in cardiology.
He practised as his own cardiologist doing his catheter studies before operating on patients. This again is unique in the world. He was not a flamboyant cardiac surgeon who did very little but talked much and claimed all the credit for himself while his juniors slogged with patients. He was also not one of those illustrated cardiac surgeons of India who are better known to the lay man through the media. He was an authentic human being and lived by the dictates of the Sanathana Dharma-he walked his talk. He was known as the skin to skin cardiac surgeon, a rare breed indeed!
The fact that Solomon became a great Indian philosopher in his later days goes to prove that he was a humane doctor. It is only a humane doctor that sees human emotions naked to react to it. The only way one could understand illness and death is by going beyond the positive sciences like physics, chemistry and biology, most of which could only answer the question “how” but not “why.” A medical scientist could answer the question “how” does the heart contract, but he will never be able to answer the question “why” does the heart contract?
That requires one to dwell deep into teleology, philosophy and religion, which Solomon did with the same fervor with which he studied medicine. I have no doubt in mind to say that Solomon was one of India’s greatest practising philosophers. A devout Christian, he was a great scholar of Vedanta. His studies that led him to show the hollowness of Darwin’s theory could rank him among one of the leading iconoclasts of his age. His paper on God and Darwinism is a great revelation to most of us who are brought up by the “scientific” mafia that holds sway on the younger generation without any one daring to question their authenticity. One has only to read the large book The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins, the professor of Science Communication at Oxford, to know its depth. Why do we need a whole department to sell science? If “science” deals only with the truth it should sell on its own!
Solomon was one of the few cardiac surgeons that innovated cardiac surgery in many areas. He was a “scientific” cardiac surgeon who attained great academic heights in his own field. The poor people in developing countries could not afford the fancy cardiac surgeries that are sold in the west for making money. Solomon realized that early in life and innovated cheaper versions to relieve the pain and suffering of the less fortunate. He was the best surgeon as he knew when not to operate. Every surgeon will know how and when to operate but, only those that are great know when not to operate. There will be many great surgeons but very few great surgeons that are wonderful human beings. Solomon was one such exceptional human being that understood the sufferings of others and tried to do his best for them.
Even in his untimely death Solomon showed to the medical fraternity that they should stop making dying miserable and undignified for the hapless patients. Dying and the few days or hours preceding death have become the biggest money spinners for profit oriented corporate hospitals these days, the US hospitals spend almost 90% of the health care budget to keep people artificially alive for the last ten days of their lives! When Solomon collapsed for the first time while on his usual ward rounds, his colleagues revived him but he refused any adventurous “divine” interventions by his friends. Solomon reminds me of that founder father of British cardiology, Paul Wood, who also died in similar circumstances at the age of 52, having refused any intervention by his well meaning friends and students. Solomon served the Indian Cardio-thoracic Surgical Association as its secretary, the most diligent one, very ably for a long time but never became its President, I think.
Solomon was telling me after his revival that he had a second life, thanks to God. That was not to be, as it was cut short again when he finally met his maker in harness in a very dignified way in his own surroundings. (Not in an intensive care unit with several tubes stuck into every orifice and being kept apparently alive artificially). He believed in the old Indian philosophy of easy exit. Solomon being such a true philanthrope, his soul would rest in eternal peace in the Lord’s abode. God loves those that love their fellowmen. Let us pray for his soul to rest in peace and the family to bear the irreparable loss in this hour of their great grief. Solomon Victor is a true role model for all those that want to become doctors.