Dr Veikalathur Sundaresa Subaramanian (1912-1988) was, besides what A Raman writes, a prominent citizen of Madras. He served as President of the Rotary Club of Madras. His wife Kamala was a talented writer, whose translations of the Ramayana and the Mahabharatha remain among the best.
– The Editor
My frequent push-bike rides from my home in Purasawalkam to Rajaratnam Stadium in mid- and late 1970s, required riding through Marshalls Road, Egmore. That aspect of bike-ride always offered me joyous experience because of its majestic calmness and far-less vehicular traffic than in the nearby thoroughfares: Pantheon and Harris Roads (presently Adithanar Salai). Riding a bike on Harris Road was, of course, a nightmare.
Marshalls Road was magnificent to me because of the relatively new, tall buildings, interspersed by vintage garden houses on either side, used both as residences and offices. The Government-Ophthalmic Hospital with its widely spaced red-brick buildings embedded within sprawling lawns was inspiring to see and feel. I remember that the administration offices of the then large pharmaceutical firms, Sandoz India and May & Baker India, tucked away in the hinder portions of two different multi-storey buildings on this road. As a college student, I used to delight myself riding through Marshalls Road, simply to inhale the air and feel an indescribable old-world charm of Egmore.
One spacious garden house, located at the entry point from Pantheon Road–Harris Road–Police-Commissioner-Office Road junction end always fascinated me. I fancied its double-storied structure with a delicate cream-white façade bearing aesthetically interspaced large wooden frame glass windows, and a decently large front portico. Whenever I passed by that garden-house, I always — rather involuntarily — turned around to catch a glimpse of the frontage of this house that filled me with a silly sense of joy and satisfaction. One of the two gate pillars included a small (1’x½’ ?) embedded granite block that bore an inscription ‘VS Subramanian, Lempert Hospital’. I cannot recall whether the prefix ‘Dr’ was there; maybe, maybe not. But I clearly remember his academic qualifications ‘M.B.,B.S., M.Sc.’ (definitely an ‘M.Sc.’ and not ‘M.S.’; Fig. 1) inscribed after his name. That was the impact that house had on me. The name ‘Lempert Hospital’ added to my curiosity. Why? I don’t know. I felt something was special about it; but I never pursued. VSS, in my guess, was a full-time private practitioner, although his 1959 publication indicates that he was an Honorary E.N.T. Surgeon at the Madras Government General Hospital.
Dr VS Subramanian, courtesy the Rotary Club of Madras archives.
Sometime in the late 1970s, I spoke to my older brother, A. Parameswaran, a medical doctor practising in Madras, about the Lempert Hospital. He shed some light on the doctor practising at Lempert. It was the ENT surgeon VS Subramanian, although he could say nothing about ‘Lempert’. His short response was that VSS was a trail-blazer in ENT surgeries in India in general and an exceptional surgeon, who deftly handled extremely delicate and intricate ear surgeries.
The above contextualises my positive vibes and memories of the Pantheon Road–Harris Road–Police-Commissioner-Office Road–Marshalls Road junction and the Marshalls Road that has today become Rukmini Lakshmipathi Salai.
Recently my mind was repeatedly thinking of Marshalls Road, Lempert Hospital, and VSS for unknown reasons. Succumbing to that pressure, I managed to get hold of a PDF of VSS’s publication Surgery for Otosclerosis in India published in the JAMA Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery (1969, 90, 786–788). (Note: Otosclerosis is a type of middle-ear conductive deafness, usually manifesting during adolescence.) The JAMA Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery was earlier the Archives of Otorhinolaryngology — Head & Neck Surgery in 1986–2012 and the Archives of Otolaryngology in 1960–1986. I could also get hold of ‘Association Notes’ written by VSS in the Indian Journal of Otolaryngology (1964, 16, 191–203). The latter prompted me to think that he should have played a responsible role (What? Could not determine) in the Association of Otolaryngologists of India, established in Bombay (Ghatkopar) under the leadership of an eminent ENT surgeon of Madras P(alathinkal) V(arkey) Cherian in 1948.
Masthead of an article by VSS in the Madras Clinical Journal (A Journal of the Madras State Branch of the Indian Medical Association), 1959, XXV, 236–238.
Normally when I write on the stars of science in Madras, I generally provide a brief biography of the person concerned. In the present instance, regrettably, I could not secure any biographical detail of VSS: I am sorry that I cannot even explain what the initial letters ‘V’. and ‘S.’ in his name stood for.
In the first paragraph in Surgery for Otosclerosis in India, written as a tribute to his mentor Julius Lempert, who had died in America in 1968, VSS briefly speaks of his academic relationship with him and that naturally unfolds an explanation why VSS had named his hospital after Lempert in Egmore. I quote from page 786 below:
‘This issue of the Archives of Otolaryngology pays special homage to a great otolaryngologist: Dr Julius Lempert. I am one of the foreigners who had the privilege to be closely associated with that great man when I worked as a resident in the Lempert Institute of Otology in 1946. Dr Lempert was absolutely dedicated to his work: a man who spent all his life’s earnings for the cause of otology. All the present advances in the surgery for otosclerosis owe their success to the pioneer work of Dr Lempert and the “one-stage fenestration” operation which he perfected. Dr Julius Lempert was an artist as a surgeon and he is the architect who laid the foundation of otosclerotic surgery.’
A brief note on Lempert, I think is necessary for MM readers. Julius Lempert (1891–1968) was a pre-eminent North-American ear–nose–throat surgeon practising in New York city in the early- and mid-decades of the 20th century. He pioneered many novel neuro-otological procedures (for details see Krisht, KM, Shelton, C., and Couldwell, WT, Journal of Neurological Surgery, B, 2015, 76, 101–107). Lempert is remembered today for the design and development of many surgical instruments: e.g., Lempert rongeur, Lempert curette, Lempert periosteal elevator. He majorly contributed to the fenestration procedure to treat otosclerosis. Fenestration is the process of creating a window (fenestra – Latin; fenêtre – modern French) in a body part, such as heart (viz., Fontan procedure) and inner ear, wherein fenestration improves hearing capacity.
VSS indicates in his 1969 paper that he trained with Lempert at the Lempert Institute of Otology, New York City, in the second quinquennium of the 1940s, thus upskilling himself with the then state-of-the-art endaural-fenestration technique. After training, VSS started performing multiple inner-ear fenestrations in India, probably from 1950. Around 1957, he started using the New-York-city E.N.T. Surgeon Samuel Rosen’s stapes-mobilization technique (developed in 1953, published in Acta Oto-Laryngologica, 1954, 44, 78–88), although VSS records that results he achieved were not that promising. Therefore, he repeated Lempert fenestrations on patients on whom he had previously done Rosen’s stapes mobilizations. In 1960, he went to USA again to retrain himself in the then ‘new’ domain of stapedectomy (an improved technique over Rosen’s stapes mobilisation) with another distinguished American ENT surgeon, John Joseph Shea (1924–2015) in Memphis, Tennessee. By 1960, VSS had successfully done 2700 stapedectomies. Stapedectomy involves the removal of stapes, covering of the cut window with a vein graft, and inserting a prosthesis to replace the diseased stapes bone, restoring the patient’s hearing, usually cent per cent.
I have recaptured the life and work of VSS, as much as I could, although I fully recognize that this has several obvious gaps. To me Lempert Hospital was a charm; but curiously I have never stepped into that building in my life. I am not sure whether the Lempert Hospital still exists in Egmore. However, Marshalls Road was a great thoroughfare for me; many physical structures, other than the Lempert, such as the Madras Ophthalmic Hospital on that Road still linger in my mind fresh.