Page 39 - Ramanujan Yatra

Ramanujan
YATRA
30
In an article in the Asia Pacific Mathematics Newsletter (April 2012, Vol. 2, No. 2), K. Srinivasa Rao of The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, also pointed out the same. “Mainly due to the efforts of Professor Robert A Rankin, a renowned mathematician and Dr. D. A. B. Young, a medical doctor, it is now common knowledge, amongst the admirers of Ramanujan, that the cause of the death of Ramanujan was not the then dreaded TB, but hepatic amoebiasis, which was the cause of his illness twice in his younger days, in India. Since TB was diagnosed by (some) doctors in England and in India after his return, as a celebrity he got the best medical attention and the full-fledged backing of the University of Madras. Since the treatment was done (not for hepatic amoebiasis but) for TB, it led to his premature death.”
In his expertly written article Dr. Young pointed out that “unfortunately, no official medical records of Ramanujan’s illness during his time in England have survived, so any attempt at a retrospective diagnosis must depend on information in letters and reminiscences.” And on the basis of such information, he retraced the whole medical history of Ramanujan and arrived at his claim of misdiagnosis of tuberculosis. In his ten-page-long analysis of the diverse possibilities that the symptoms suffered by Ramanujan might indicate, Young took into account and examined all the available facts about Ramanujan’s illness and the contradicting opinions of the Doctors who have attended him and finally presented what he called “a diagnosis by exclusion”. Referring to the different possible diseases that might have caused his dominant symptom of ‘Intermittent pyrexia’, and eliminating them one-by-one through their would-be-evident manifestation in a blood count he reached the crux of his theory that the “disease is hepatic amoebiasis and the fact that it has been arrived at here by a process of elimination should not disguise the high probability that it could have been the cause of intermittent fever in someone of Ramanujan’s background.”
However, Professor (Dr.) D.N. Guha Mazumder, a senior Gastroenterologist of high repute, who is a member of the Task Force of Liver Disease, Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi and former Head of the Department of Gastroenterology, Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata, holds contrary views. After going through the medical arguments by Dr. Young in details, he referred to the ‘diagnosis by exclusion’ as proposed by Dr. Young as “far-fetched”. He points out the fact that, at the time under consideration, Madras was quite advanced in tackling tropical diseases and with a blood count data suggesting any possibility of a liver abscess, it seems quite unlikely that the eminent doctors treating Ramanujan would have failed to explore that possibility as well. He further suggests that it is highly unlikely that a case of liver abscess, if not treated properly, would take such a prolonged period of time to worsen through gradual deterioration, rather than a faster manifestation of ultimate decline. He strongly feels that the available data are