Seeking alternatives, asserting choices: Dr Mahendralal Sarkar's life in medicine and science

This article examines the medical life of a native physician who embraced homoeopathy despite being trained in the dominant pathy i.e. allopathy at the prestigious Calcutta Medical College in the 1860s. Mahendralal Sarkar, the physician in focus, was one of the first famous converts to homoeopathy. His seeking of an alternative option created space and legitimacy for homoeopathy. Through the journal Calcutta Journal of Medicine that Sarkar founded, he, with great ability, asserted and defended his right as a physician to decide in favour of homoeopathy. Sarkar gradually established himself as an accomplished homoeopath and was recognised as an important public figure of Calcutta. The odds and opposition he faced convinced him to embark on a great task of the cultivation of science as, in his view, the inculcation of the spirit of science was the need of the day to break the orthodoxy and mitigate prejudices of the medical profession and society at large.