News & Media

January 23, 1910 – June 23, 2007
MNI Fellow 1945-1948

Dr. Jacob Chandy, distinguished alumnus of the Montreal Neurological Institute, was a leading figure in Indian medical education for over forty years and was known as India’s first neurosurgeon.

Dr. Chandy established the nation’s first Department of Neurological Sciences at Christian Medical College and Hospital, Vellore in 1949. During the next two decades, he served as Chairman of the department, and developed it into an outstanding program. The Department celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 1999 and continues to be ranked among the best in South Asia. He also initiated the nation’s first postgraduate training courses in Neurology and Neurosurgery. In 1964, for these and many other achievements, the President of India conferred on him the Padma Bhushan, a high civilian decoration for “distinguished service to the nation”. He received a Medal of Honour from the World Congress of Neurological Surgeons in 1989.

Dr. Chandy was the son and grandson of Christian clerics in Travancore (now Kerala), South India. From them, he acquired the stern discipline, purposefulness, commitment, and abiding faith that characterized his remarkable life. Following graduation from Madras Medical College, internship and surgical residency training, he left India in 1939, to work at the Mission Hospital, Bahrain, Persian Gulf. It is believed that his interest in Neurosurgery began in Bahrain where he came under the influence of Paul W. Harrison, an American medical missionary, who, during his education at Johns Hopkins Hospital, had worked with Harvey Cushing, the world-renowned neurosurgeon. Dr. Harrison recognized his exemplary surgical skills, and actively encouraged him to obtain Neurosurgical training in North America.

Towards the end of World War II, he became a Fellow under Professor Jonathan E. Rhoads in the Department of Surgery at University of Pennsylvania Hospital and Medical School. After obtaining the Master of Medical Sciences degree, he trained for three years at the MNI as Fellow in Neurosurgery under Drs. Wilder Penfield, William Cone and Arthur Elvidge. In 1947, he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada, and in 1948, he moved to the University of Chicago as Chief Resident in Neurosurgery, under Dr. Theodore Rasmussen, who later succeeded Dr. Penfield as Director of the MNI.

In 1949, he returned to India, after spending ten years abroad. Dr. JC Jacob, who in later years, became Dr. Chandy’s student, recalls the prevalent interest in Dr. Chandy’s impending home-coming - “…my Science teacher in school showed me a newspaper clipping about a ‘Dr. Chandy’ who was then training in North America, and who would soon return to India, as the country’s first Neurosurgeon…”

It was an exhilarating period in Indian history. British rule had ended two years earlier, and the nation was poised for major change. Christian Medical College and Hospital in Vellore, South India, founded in 1900, by the visionary American medical missionary, Dr. Ida Scudder, was beginning to expand into one of the largest medical centers in Asia. Dr. Chandy accepted the invitation, and the challenge, to set up a Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at Vellore - the first of its kind in India.

For Dr. Chandy, this was the beginning of a series of noteworthy accomplishments. A significant part of his mission was to integrate the clinical and basic science aspects of the neurological sciences in the manner of the MNI and thus enhance the clinical, educational and research roles of the department. To this end, he maintained close ties with the MNI, and arranged for key members of his team to be trained there - notably Drs JC Jacob and GM Taori in Neurology, Dr. Sushil Chandi in Neuropathology, Elizabeth Mammen and S.Sarojini in Neurosurgical Nursing. In 1957, Dr. Penfield visited Vellore and laid the foundation stone of a building adjoining the clinical wards that would further replicate the MNI. He recruited a brilliant biochemist, Dr. B K Bachawat, who developed a fine Neurochemistry laboratory. This laboratory, in collaborative studies with Dr. James Austin (USA), identified the enzymopathy of Metachromatic Leucodystrophy, and continues to achieve many successes.

In addition to these activities, he held various other positions including that of Principal of Christian Medical College, and Founder and President of the Neurological Society of India. He also served on the Medical Education Committee of the Ministry of Health, the Governing Body of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Indian Council of Medical Research.

He retired in 1970, when he was sixty years old, the mandatory retirement age in India. For the remainder of his life, he lived in Kottayam, Kerala near his ancestral home. During retirement, he remained involved in medical education. He is survived by his wife, a daughter, two sons, and several grandchildren. His older son, Mathew, also a neurosurgeon and former MNI Fellow, was Head of the Department of Neurosurgery, in the department that his father founded.

Dr. Chandy will be remembered as a powerful influence on several generations of undergraduate and graduate students, who have gone on to work in a number of different settings, including major academic centers in India and other countries. His legacy is echoed in the remarks of Alan Gregg*: “To free your teachers to teach, to free your students to learn, to create opportunities for your researchers to solve the medical problems of India, and above all to consider the needs of the near and oncoming future…”

* Wilder Penfield ; The Difficult Art of Giving : The Epic of Alan Gregg ; Little , Brown and Company.1967 ; p.33