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Magazine
Changing lives
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As a pioneering surgeon, he brought new life to those afflicted by leprosy. And while most doctors were taught not to get too involved with their patients, his life was irrevocably intertwined with their lives. USHA JESUDASAN remembers Paul Brand.
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DR. PAUL BRAND, the pioneer of reconstructive surgery, died on July 8 in Seattle, the United States. He was also an excellent teacher, an insightful writer, a keen naturalist, an inspiring speaker and the recipient of many awards.
Paul Brand was born to missionary parents who worked in the Kolli Hills in Tamil Nadu at the beginning of the 20th century. His father died early and Paul resisted family pressure to become a missionary doctor like his father. He chose instead to work in the building trade in London as a carpenter and builder, until one day he felt the call to become a doctor.
He came to India in 1946 during the war in response to a need for a surgeon for the Christian Medical College, Vellore. As a young surgeon he saw some patients standing far outside his outpatient department and was told that they were leprosy patients.
" Why aren't they coming in?" he asked. " Because if they came in, everyone else would go out. There's no place for them here," he was told. That troubled him.
While on a visit to his friend Dr. Cochrane at a leprosy centre in Chinglepet, Dr Brand saw many patients with severe deformities. There was very little knowledge about leprosy, and he was amazed that no one had studied the problem before. " What causes these deformities?" he asked Dr Cochrane. " I don't know, you are the orthopaedic surgeon, you tell me," said Dr Cochrane
So he began to study the tissues of leprosy patients during his spare time after regular surgery and discovered that leprosy destroys nerve ends, leading to the deformities. He also found that since the patient lost all feeling of pain, that he or she was susceptible to constant injuries, which led to terrible ulcers, which resulted finally in the loss of fingers and toes.
After this discovery, he set about repairing the deformed hands by reconstructing muscles through surgery. The first surgery was a success and hundreds of leprosy patients came to him after that. Finally, there was hope for those suffering from leprosy. Wasted hands could now be repaired and used again.
Though they could use their hands, the stigma of leprosy still followed them. Paul realised that reconstructive surgery was useless unless it enabled patients to live a normal life. So he came up with the idea of the New Life Centre, a place where patients could learn a trade suited to their new hands to rebuild their lives.
Some homes around Vellore and Gudiyattam taluk have a photograph of a smiling man. Often he is to be seen with his arm around someone. That someone would be a leprosy patient.
Medical history books will tell you that he made groundbreaking history and straightened out useless hands. They will not tell you that he made people smile and taught them to rejoice at being alive, despite their deformity.
Most doctors are taught not to get involved with their patients or their families. Paul Brand's life was irrevocably intertwined with that of his patients. It was this deep sense of compassion that drove him to find ways of making their lives dignified and whole. I was privileged to be part of a team that made a film about Paul and Margaret Brand.
During the filming I met Sadagopan. Sadagopan was a young badly deformed leprosy patient when he first came to Paul Brand. Through their many interactions, he became a very special friend. Sadogaopan visited Paul while we were filming "Two Lives". During a break, Paul said to Sadagopan "let me see your feet again, I have missed it so much." He undid the heavy roller boots, took the stump feet out carefully and held one foot in both his hands. "I just love this foot," he told me. This foot had no toes, and was smooth and round. " I think perhaps this was one of my failures," he said, telling me of the elaborate sequence of surgeries that were performed on Sadogopan — tendon transfers, nerve strippings, and finally toe amputations. But Sadogpan would not accept it as a failure. "You gave me life," he said, "You gave me the courage to live life normally, you encouraged me to get married and have a family, you made me proud to be a man. That is not a failure."
Paul's sense of joy was infectious. Joy in the beauty of Nature, joy in his wife Margaret and their happy marriage, joy at simple things like ice cream and mangoes and marmalade and a hot cup of tea.All of us face the same kind of uncertainties and anxieties today that Paul Brand did over five decades ago. We want meaning to our lives, we want to make a difference to our world; we want success and happiness. Is it possible to live in society, achieve success, and still be humble? Is it possible to serve others sacrificially, live a simple life and still be rich in the things that really matter?
Paul Brand's rich and wonderful life shows us that it is. "Because of where I practised medicine I never made much money. But as I look back over a lifetime, the host of friends who were once my patients bring me more joy than wealth could ever bring. I first met them when they were suffering and in pain. I shared their pain. Now that I am old it is their love and gratitude that illuminates the continuing pathway of my life. It's strange — those of us who involve ourselves in places where there is much suffering look back in surprise to find that it was there that we discovered joy."
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