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In the year 1948, on Aug 9th Yella Pragada died of a massive heart attack.
On his death the American Press praised him as 21st century's forerunner
medical researcher, life saver, and a doctor to remember to the future
generations.
He is the heart of millions of people. Though the countries not recognized
his services in a deemed fit manner, People did and do. Millions recall him
as their life saver. The invented medicines are gifts of God in the human
form. As a great doctor, As a life saver, Medicinist,Researcher, he reached
the heights and the peaks of the mighty Himalayas.
Most of the famous scientists around the world are known only for one
major discovery that has had a lasting impact on our lives : Wilhelm
Roentgen for x-rays, Marie Curie for radium, C V Raman for the scattering
of light by liquids, P M S Blackett for cosmic rays, Ronald Ross for the life
cycle of the malarial parasite, Alexander Fleming for penicillin all awarded
the Nobel Prize for their one major discovery. There have been a few
scientists known for two discoveries : Albert Einstein for the photoelectric
effect and the theory of relativity, John Bardeen for transistors and superconductivity, Hargobind Khurana for the genetic code and synthesis of
gene. Occasionally a scientist makes a large number of discoveries albeit
in only one field like Robert Woodward in organic chemistry. Then there are
persons who have made important contributions but have not received the
Nobel Prize or equivalent honours like Jonas Salk who made the first polio
vaccine, Michael Heidelberger the father of modern immunology, G N
Ramachandran who discovered the structure of collagen, the most
abundant protein in our body and also laid the foundations for CT scan and
NMR technologies. Rarely, extremely rarely, a person comes on the world
scene and transforms science and our lives by making a large number of
major discoveries in and otherwise makes important contributions to
more than one basic field and does not only not get a Nobel Prize but does
not get to be known by name to most people, including scientists around
the world. I am referring to Yellapragada SubbaRow. Such an individual is
perhaps born once in a thousand years or more. I do not believe there is
any other person in the documented history of biology and medicine over
the last 5,000 years who made such a large number of basic discoveries
that are applied so widely. SubbaRow was born in India in 1895 and he
died in USA in 1948 at the young age of 53. He went to the United States in
1923 after graduating from the Madras Medical College and worked at
Harvard Medical School until 1940 when he went to Lederle Laboratories to
direct its medical research.
The search he directed at Lederle Laboratories for antibiotics with wider
range of cures than the then available penicillin and streptomycin led to the
discovery of polymyxin widely used even today in cattle-feed and
aureomycin the first of tetracycline antibiotics which all of us have had
some time or the other in our lives. Tetracyclines have saved millions of
lives over the last 50 years. Aureomycin was presented to medicine in
1948, the year SubbaRow died. It was the first broadspectrum
antibiotic, that is, one effective against both gram-positive and gramnegative germs. It was thus more powerful than either Flemings
penicillin or Waksmans streptomycin. When SubbaRows centenary year
began in 1994, tetracyclines especially doxycycline helped
confine and then eradicate the plague epidemic that broke out in Gujarat
and Maharashtra. It was a debt SubbaRow paid to his motherland almost
half a century after death which claimed him soon after the unveiling of
Aureomycin before a medical gathering at the New York Academy of
Sciences. oxycycline, the third generation tetracycline, has recently been
cleared as a malaria preventive. The international staff of the United
Nations Assistance Mission in East Timor (UNMET) packed it in their
survival kits when ordered last year into the region wrested from
Indonesia.
Dr. Yellapragada SubbaRow (1895-1948) He Transformed Science;
Changed Lives, Pushpa Mitra Bhargava, Journal, Indian Academy of
Clinical Medicine Vol. 2, No. 1 and 2 January-June 2001.
Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India
Chairman
Dr.Yellapragada Subba Rao Foundation
Director
Nayudamma Centre for Development Alternatives
Nellore(AP),India