V.R. Khanolkar’s initial years as pathologist and researcher in India: 1924–1941

Abstract

Vasant Ramji Khanolkar was the first Indian pathologist and a pioneering researcher who was at the forefront of the diverse fields of cancer research, blood group genetics, epidemiology and leprosy research, etc. in the mid-twentieth century. All his cutting-edge research took place after he joined Tata Memorial Hospital, Bombay (now Mumbai), as Director of Laboratories. There is little evidence of his research in the first 17 years of his career in India, at J.J. Hospital and K.E.M. Hospital, Bombay. We tried to address this gap by attempting to obtain information on Khanolkar’s papers from PubMed, prior to his having joined Tata Memorial Hospital. We evaluated the abstracts of the presentations that he made at the meetings of the Teaching Pathologists Association, Bombay. Finally, we extracted from the autopsy registers at the two hospitals, any useful information about the autopsies that he had performed. Khanolkar performed preliminary laboratory research in anaemia as well as some experimental pathology in his stint at K.E.M. Hospital. Further, surprisingly, histology was not performed on most autopsies at J.J. Hospital for the period that he was Professor, but was done at K.E.M. Hospital. Why Khanolkar was a late bloomer and did not perform much research or publish in the first two institutions that he was Professor at, remains a mystery.