A medical college as grand as its 140-year-old past

Pune: If you are walking past Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College, you must step inside the premises to really feel the grandeur of the 140-year-old institution.
Though built in 1878 as BJ Medical School, the current structure with tall pillars and an exposed brick façade, harks back to a post-independence reconstruction that was completed in 1952.

The architecture is a blend of Indian and western styles. However, the sprawling campus sings of the noveau riche in Pune along with the treatment of imprisoned freedom fighters. The alumni boast of a generation of outstanding dramatists, even filmmakers, which might seem odd for a medical school.

Adjacent to the medical college stands the famous Sassoon hospital. After four years in the making, the construction of Sassoon hospital was finally completed in 1867. The main building of the 144-bed facility still stands tall after subsequent modifications, albeit the grand view is blocked by trees and a water tank.

Around half-a-decade later, the Bombay Presidency decided that Pune should have its own medical teaching school. They selected a large piece of land beside the Sassoon hospital and began work on building the institution. The project also received ample funding.

Byramjee Jeejeebhoy has been referred to as an Esquire in the British archives, particularly due to his vast business relationships with the East India Company directors and later the Crown. Besides having attained wealth and nobility, he was deeply involved in philanthropy. He funded a college and a Parsi charity institution in Mumbai, while also putting forward a generous sum for the construction of a new medical school in Pune.

In 1878, after around two years of construction, the BJ Medical School was complete, and started functioning out of a relatively smaller campus, than what stands today. Youngsters in the city began to receive western-style medical education, which was only available in Mumbai back then.

As a teaching and research school, it did not have a mandate to treat patients, but some special cases were indeed referred here. Prisoners from the Yerwada jail were sent here, so that they could be treated in seclusion.

On a stormy night in 1924, a prominent prisoner was brought in as an emergency case.

As per the college records, Mahatma Gandhi was referred here for an urgent appendix surgery, while he was imprisoned at the Yerwada jail. A British member of the Royal Medical Corps, Col Murdoch, performed the surgery with an Indian anesthetist assisting him in the operation. Spiritual guru Meher Baba was also born in the maternity ward of the college.

At the dawn of independence, the school was upgraded to a college, but the name was retained, and it became affiliated to the University of Pune, and later, the Nashik-based Maharashtra University of Health Sciences.

These days, besides innovation in medicine, the college students are as much a name in the theatre art. Starting from the 60s, its theatre groups began winning various contests held in the city, giving birth to a new generation of artists.