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Friday, September 6, 2019

email from Nihal Gooneratne


We were 3rd or 4th year medical students. Two Australian medicos had just arrived to rotate as externs in Rajasooriyar's ward. On the first day of their rotation,  when Prof. requested one of them to examine a patient with abdominal pain,  without any hesitation he knelt on the wet floor, in order to palpate and examine the abdomen. Rajasooriyar on seeing this could not believe that a white man would do this in Sri Lanka. Life came to Rajasooriyar's eyes and immediately uttered "do you see what he is doing Aha!". This dawned the new era of abdominal examination and palpation  in the Professor's unit, until we passed out.

      To date I have never seen this being done anywhere else except in Rajasooriyar's ward. I wonder how many of us practiced this art on passing out. This was another of his teach through humiliation, as he often did.

      Whatever may be Rajasooriya's faults he drove into us the basics of medicine, to survive even in remote places like Bintenna as well as in more advanced countries like USA or UK. He was indeed a great teacher. He took his patients and teaching very seriously. He made sure we passed out as good clinicians. He taught us the art of using our hands for palpation and powers of observation. Above all he drove into us the idea "Common things first".

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