West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee paid tributes to Mahendralal Sarkar, the founder of Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, on the latter’s 114th death anniversary on Friday, 23 February.
Sarkar, a qualified doctor in the traditional European system of medicine, is hailed as one of India’s most renowned homoeopaths and social reformers of the 19th century.
“Tribute to homoeopath doctor, social reformer and propagator of scientific studies in nineteenth-century India, Mahendralal Sarkar on his death anniversary,” Banerjee wrote on Twitter.
Tribute to homoeopath doctor, social reformer and propagator of scientific studies in nineteenth-century India, Mahendralal Sarkar on his death anniversary
— Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) February 23, 2018
Born in Paikpara village in Howrah district on 2 November 1833, Sarkar completed his initial education from the prestigious Hare School and Hindu College before enrolling in Calcutta Medical College to study medicine.
He qualified as an M.D. in 1863 and, along with Jagabandhu Bose, was the second Indian to qualify in the discipline after Chandrakumar De.
Sarkar, who proclaimed homoeopathy to be superior to the “Western medicine” of the time, is credited with giving homoeopathy an impetus in Bengal and, thereby, in India.
His patients included author Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the Maharaja of Tripura and others.