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GENERATIONAL
PERSPECTIVES

EDITOR’S NOTE:

In the May and June issues of San Antonio Medicine we will be featuring articles by local doctors or medical
students who come from families with multiple generations of physicians. The stories look at both the knowl-
edge and experiences passed down from prior generations and the influence that has been passed on to subse-
quent generations. If you would like to submit an article about your family please send it to
Mike.Thomas@bcms.org and it may be published in future issues of the magazine.

MEDICINE
ACROSS
GENERATIONAL
BORDERS

By Shaoli Chaudhuri

When I was first exploring medical He acted as a doctor of the community, first and fore-
schools in the summer of 2013, I most, seeing adults and children alike in rural India.
clicked through websites, browsed the col-
orful pamphlets, and I knew without a I learned just recently, that Dadu obtained a diploma in tropical
doubt that I wanted to get a dual MD-MPH medicine and infectious disease — merely because he found it in-
degree. I had always had an interest in the teresting. Every time I traveled to India and spoke to Dadu about
social determinants of health and in global health or medicine or really any topic, he would bring up the subject
and immigrant health. I was fascinated to learn more about trop- of social medicine. “Here in India,” he would say, “you have to learn
ical medicine and primary care. And it’s funny to look back on about these things in medical school. We all take a class on social
that summer and realize my ideas did not start with me at all — medicine, determinants of health, how to prevent disease in people.”
they started two generations back. And I thought to myself, He gets it. He understood what some
My Dadu (i.e. maternal grandfather) grew up an ocean and physicians and peers do not always acknowledge: that public health
continent away from Texas, in Benapur, India. Benapur is a lush, can be critical in guiding your individual practice of medicine. In
green village that sits along a river. It is known more for its rice fact, I think he was the one who taught me that, though I never re-
paddies and excellent fish than its medical training. At the time, ally knew it until I reflected on it.
my Dadu’s family lived in a poor neighborhood and he became
the second in his family to go to college. With the encouragement Then came my mother, Swapna. My mother was born into a life
of his brothers, he matriculated into medical school in the not unlike mine. Like me, she was the eldest child and grew up with
bustling city of Kolkata, India. For the next 28 years, he worked a physician-parent (I grew up with two!), and was never made to
as a general practitioner for the Indian railway and became fasci-
nated with transfusion medicine and pathology in the process.

14 San Antonio Medicine • May 2017