1. Pandit Madhusudan Gupta was a Bengali Baidya Brahmin translator and Ayurvedic practitioner who was trained in Western medicine and is credited with having performed India's first human dissection at Calcutta Medical College in 1836, almost 3,000 years after Susruta.
Madhusudan Gupta, spelled in several other ways including Panndit Madusudden Gupta, Madhu Sudan Gupta, and Moodhoosooden Goopto, was born sometime in 1800 into a Baidya family, a traditional physician community, in Baidyabati, Hooghly.
Madhusudan Gupta's grandfather was the Nawab of Hooghly's family physician and his great-grandfather was a Bakshi.
Madhusudan Gupta rebelled against his father's wishes to pursue studies and left home during his early education.
In 1834, Madhusudan Gupta was paid 1,000 rupees for translating Hooper's Anatomists' Ved-mecum.
Newly founded in March 1835, Madhusudan Gupta was transferred to the CMC, as a native teacher, where he became involved in the execution of the first entrance examinations and where he assisted Henry Goodeve and William Brooke O'Shaughnessy.
Widely acknowledged as the "first dissector of British India", Madhusudan Gupta has been frequently credited with the launch of modern medicine in India and breaking religious taboos.
In order for the influential Indian community to accept human dissection, Madhusudan Gupta was influenced by Drinkwater Bethune and requested by David Hare, who sought advice from Radhakanta Deb, to produce the necessary supporting literary evidence from traditional Sanskrit Ayurvedic literature.
Madhusudan Gupta was assisted by four students, Umacharan Sett, Rajkrishna Dey, Dwarakanath Gupta and Nabin Chandra Mitra.
Fourteen years later, Bethune described how "at the appointed hour, scalpel in hand, he [Madhusudan Gupta] followed Goodeve into the Godown" and after the first cut, "a long-gasping breath" came from the relieved on-lookers.
Madhusudan Gupta was successful with his given evidence from Sanskrit scriptures and what followed was a steady progression of dissection at CMC over the coming years.
The question of whether Madhusudan Gupta's dissection was the actual first has been debated.
Madhusudan Gupta discloses his wish to praise those students, but for the adverse publicity they would receive, he regretfully refrained.
Madhusudan Gupta described the credit and honour given to Gupta for the first dissection, despite.
Madhusudan Gupta attributed the high maternal and neonatal mortality due to fever as owing to the dire state of the labour rooms.
Madhusudan Gupta therefore, appealed for better qualified affordable Hindu midwives and a well equipped lying-in hospital.
Madhusudan Gupta stated that an initial prejudice against vaccination had been overcome over the years and commended the Native vaccinators.
Madhusudan Gupta consequently pleaded for proper ventilation, drainage and water.
Madhusudan Gupta translated the London pharmacopoeia of 1836 in Bengali, the Aushadh Kalpabali.
Madhusudan Gupta had, in addition, contributed a note on the medical uses of leeches in the Bengal Dispensatory.
Madhusudan Gupta developed diabetes mellitus and following a dissection, contracted an infection which led to gangrene of his hands.
Madhusudan Gupta subsequently died of septicaemia on 15 November 1856.