Gananath Sen

Kabiraj Gananath Sen (Bengali: গণনাথ সেন; 1877 – 1944/1945) was a Bengali Ayurvedic physician, Sanskrit scholar and teacher.

Personal life Gananath Sen was born in 1877 into a Baidya Brahmin family in Benares (now Varanasi), Uttar Pradesh, India. He was the son of Viswanath Sen, also an Ayurvedic practitioner and disciple of Kabiraj Gangadhar Roy, a Sanskrit scholar and Ayurvedic physician renowned as one of the founding fathers of modern Ayurveda. He had a son, Kabiraj Sushil Kumar Sen.

Career Sen, born into a lineage of kobirajes, trained under his father Viswanath Sen, Acharya Kaliprasanna Sen, and Kabiraj Jaynarayan Gupta. He also served as the president of the All-India Ayurvedic Congress (AIAC; Hindi: अखिल भारतीय आयुर्वेद महासम्मेलन) thrice, in 1911, 1920 and 1931. Sen also emphasized the grandness and multi-disciplinary nature of Ayurveda. He believed it to be a highly developed "world science," on par with Western medicine. In the early 1930s, Sen, along with physician Kartick Chandra Bose, commenced clinical investigation of the shrub, its properties and antihypertensive effects. They found it had the potential to function as a tranquilizing herb and for lowering blood pressure. In 1931, the pair published a seminal paper on the subject, demonstrating successfully the treatment of psychosis and violent symptoms in patients using alkaloids from the shrub, while also recording its adverse effects. Their work eventually led to the isolation of the alkaloid reserpine in 1950, and was instrumental in the development of drugs for the alleviation of hypertension, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease and depression, among others. Their research also laid the foundation for reverse pharmacology in India.

Sen also worked tirelessly for the welfare of his community, the Baidyas, and founded a "Baidya Brahmin Somiti" in Kolkata to further their cause.

Honours The British Indian Government conferred upon him the honorific Mahāmahopādhyāya (Sanskrit: "very great teacher") in 1916. He was also granted other honorary titles during his lifetime, including Vidyasāgara ("ocean of knowledge"), Pranācārya ("royal physician"), and Vaidya Ratna ("jewel of physicians").