Soorjo Coomar Goodeve Chuckerbutty

Life in England

Chuckerbutty was Goodeve's favourite student. and much of Chuckerbutty's account of life in England comes from memoirs of Professor Goodeve, who described how he embraced and was charmed by the British ways of life and of Christianity, views that years later Chuckerbutty had changed opinion of. the four students also resided with him at 7 Upper Woburn Place. He became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) in 1848. Minimum age requirements for the examinations meant that he attained his qualifications two years after the other students.

In 1848, he reported to the Medical College in Calcutta, his spontaneous conversion to Christianity and his adoption of his new name Soorjo Coomar "Goodeve" Chuckerbutty.

Indian Medical Service Before 1855, Indians were not permitted to take senior appointments in the IMS. As a consequence, Chuckerbutty decided to travel back to London to sit it. He was one of the twenty-two candidates out of twenty-eight, after George Marr. Subsequently, he was appointed to the covenanted medical service as Assistant Surgeon in January 1855. In 1867 he became Surgeon and in 1873, Surgeon Major to the Bengal Army. Preconceptions also arose from Indians. The social stigma from dissecting a corpse and travelling abroad counted him an outcast for much of the Indian community.

19th century British medicine in India had its concerns with India’s many febrile illnesses and epidemics and some leading physicians disputed the existence of typhus in India. Chuckerbutty, however, was one who believed otherwise and reported on cases of typhus in Calcutta that he had treated in 1864.

In addition to leading roles in a number of Calcutta's hospitals and dispensaries, he published in the Medical Times and Gazette, the Lancet, the British Medical Journal, the Indian Medical Gazette and the Indian Annals of Medical Science of Calcutta. He also edited the fourth edition of Goodeve's Hints on Children in India.

Family Chuckerbutty married Sarah and had four sons and two daughters. and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in West London.

At the CMC, he was succeeded by R. C. Chandra.

Selected publications .

"Cases illustrative of the Pathology of Dysentery", Military Orphan Press, Calcutta, 1865. "Cholera, its symptoms, clinical history, pathology, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and prophylaxis", R. C. Lepage and Co, Calcutta, 1867.

Popular Lectures on Subjects of Indian Interest, Thomas S. Smith, Calcutta, 1870.