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        Prof. Dr. Krishnamoorthy Srinivas returned to India in January 1965 after seven years with three (3) M.R.C.Ps. and with rich clinical experience in all the branches of Neurology gained under the expert guidance of great Neurologists. Prof Dr. K.S has always been fortunate to go to the right place at the right time. He had the glorious privilege of undergoing training at the Regional Neurological Centre in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK in 1963-64. He was trained in neuro-muscular disorders and neuro-pathology by the world famous Neurologist Prof. John Walton who later became Lord Walton of Detchant. Prof. Dr. K.S. was one of his favourite students. Prof. Dr. K.S. invited Lord Walton to deliver T.S. Srinivasan Endowment oration organized by the Public Health Centre, West Mambalam, Chennai in February 1983. Lord Walton described the work of Prof. Dr. K.S. in these words: 'A most impressive development, the combination of high quality specialist care with dedicated community service represented in this Centre is surely a model for other Centres to follow. I wish the Public Health Centre every
continuing success in the future'.
 

A multi-disciplinary approach to a patient at VHS, Adyar.

        Soon after his return to Madras in 1965, he joined the Institute of Neurology, Government General Hospital, Madras as Honorary Assistant Professor. Prof. Dr. K S Sanjeevi, the founder-Director of the Voluntary Health Service (VHS), Chennai invited Prof. Dr. K.S. to establish a department of Neurology at the V.H.S. Readily and willingly Prof. Dr. K.S. joined the VHS as a Consultant Neurologist the same year and established K. Gopalakrishna Department of Neurology which today has become a National Centre of excellence in the field of Neurology.

        Likewise, MC Subramanyam, a great Gandhian Social Worker and Founder-Secretary of Public Health Centre at West Mambalam, Chennai invited Prof. Dr. KS to serve as a Consultant Neurologist at the Public Health Centre (PHC) with focus on community health. This has resulted in the establishment of the TS Srinivasan Department of Clinical Neurology and Research, PHC, Chennai in 1969.

        What made Prof. Dr. KS give up the opportunity for lucrative jobs abroad and in India in the private corporate health sector or elsewhere in favour of a life of service in the field of 'Community Neurology'? Prof. Dr. K.S. gave me the following answer: 'I became aware of the rising costs of medical management and the problems being created by the social changes like the collapse of the joint family system. These problems were making it very difficult for taking proper care of the Neurological patients coming from the middle classes and lower sections of society. Unless, I am sure that a neurological disease in a patient is fatal, I do not charge the patient. I many times waive my fees for the economically disadvantaged and follow a graded system of fees for the rest.

        'The in-patient fees at the Neurological Centres at both VHS and PHC is kept as low as possible. I have created a group of peer counselors, including nurse educators, social workers and psychotherapists to counsel the neurological patient's family, more or less on a continuing basis. This process has evolved over time. This approach helps to prepare the patient's family to deal with the neurological disease, the treatment of which is often prolonged. In India, unlike in the U.S., we cannot break the news of the disease immediately to a patient's family. We have to do it in stages. Otherwise, the family will go away and may even go for multiple consultations, aggravating the condition of the patient. I have dedicated myself to the field of Community Neurology at both these Centres as my life's mission, remembering the message of Mahatma Gandhi: 'We can double our joys by endeavouring to halve the sorrows of others'.

        In my view Prof. Dr. K.S. by his dedicated life of love and service for the poor, informed by his unmatched knowledge in all spheres of neurology, has indeed concretized the ideals of John Ruskin who wrote: 'All real joy and power of progress in humanity depend upon finding something to reverence, and all the baseness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of disdain'.

        About 8000 patients are treated annually by Prof. Dr. K.S. and his team at the VHS, Adyar and about 4000 patients annually at the PHC, West Mambalam. Of them, at least 4000 are new patients every year. Annually about 1500 patients are admitted as in-patients at VHS, Adyar and 500 at the PHC, West Mambalam. In order to minimize the cost for the poor patients, very careful scrutiny and pre-examination is done before recommending in-patient treatment to any patient. According to Prof. Dr. K.S., 80% of the patients with neurological complaints do not require hospital admission. They really require counselling, which is done by a team of medical and para-medical staff appointed for the purpose. The most important point that must be noticed not only by the Government but by all the Public Health authorities in India is that at both these Centres the endeavour to keep the costs low for the patients has not in any way diluted the quality or excellence of clinical diagnosis or treatment. In this context I have to quote from a latter of Timothy A. Pedley, M.D. of Columbia University Medical Centre in U.S.A. addressed to Prof. Dr. K.S. in February, 2005: 'All of your visitors, I suspect, have been impressed with your consistent dedication to providing the highest level of neurological expertise to all citizens of India, regardless of ability to pay. The clinics you have organized at Hospitals throughout Chennai are superb, and you are unstinting in the time you commit to them. You have been a pioneer in India in emphasizing the importance of a multi-disciplinary team in delivering neurological care. You have somehow managed, within an inflexible and resource-poor medical bureaucracy, to have physical therapists, specialist nurses, EEG Technicians, various dedicated volunteers, and the necessary medical and psychiatric consultants routinely involved'.

        In order to put the Doctors and the members of the general public in the city of Madras in touch with the best men in the field of neurology, Prof. Dr. K.S. has been regularly organizing T.S. Srinivasan Endowment Oration right from 1980 every year. On the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of this oration, he brought out a celebratory book entitled A Neuro-sciences Legacy which has been well received in India and abroad.

        Prof. Dr. K.S. is Emeritus Professor of Neurology at the Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Chennai and Honorary Visiting Professor of Neurology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Madras and at the Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences in Tirupathy. He was Honorary Consultant in Neurology for the Armed Forces between 1979 and 1995. He has published over 50 research articles in Neuro-sciences in several national and international journals.

        Prof. Dr. K.S. has made no outstanding discoveries. He has not authored any outstanding book in the field of Neurology. His renown rests entirely upon his personality as physician, as teacher, as man. As a lover and student of Medical History, I can say this with conviction. We cannot but be struck by the parallel with Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738) one of the greatest physicians in the history of medicine. Boerhaave, too, made no outstanding discoveries. His books, valuable though they were, would never have accounted for his wide reputation in medical history in the Western world. What distinguished him from his contemporaries was that he was the greatest clinical teacher in early 18th century Europe. He was like a magnet continually attracting pupils and patients to Leyden. He was a man who taught juniors how to watch and how to think at the bedside of the sick. He was one who inspired medical students with an enthusiasm for the healing art and filled them with the physician's ethos. It will not be too much to say that Prof. Dr. K.S. is all this and more.

        What is the secret of the success of Prof. Dr. K.S.? The straight answer is 'behind all his success and life of service, guided by profound knowledge, lies the inimitable dedication of his remarkable wife Padma Srinivas'. Her great ideals as his life's partner have always marched alongside his own and together they are indeed a model couple serving as a source of inspiration. Their example is worthy of emulation by the younger generation.