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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