Abstract: It was in 1943 that I entered the B.Pharm Course of Banaras Hindu University, it was taken after the intermediate. Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya, the founder, was still there at BHU and Sir S. Radhakrishnan was the Vice-Chancellor of the University. Prof. N.K. Basu had taken over as head of the Department of Pharmaceutics.
I was born and brought up at Jaipur which was a small capital city of a medium-sized princely state ruled by Maharaja Sawai Man Singh. He had just married Gayatri Devi, the princess of Cooch-Behar (Bengal).
When I left Jaipur for Varanasi, I was not really scared of missing my family but certainly of leaving such a beautiful city with its shopping arcades, the Hawa Mahal, scores of beautiful peacocks in the royal palaces and most, the Maharaja and Maharani whom I had not even met, but seen only from a distance.
A fortnight before leaving for Varanasi, I had suffered a severe attack of malaria and the only drug known for its treatment was quinine. Mepacrine, and chloroquine were to be discovered some years later. Quinine, the only remedy, was scarce since all the Cinchona plantations of Indonesia and Burma had gone from Dutch and British control to the Japanese. Therefore quinine and other alkaloids of Cinchona were hardly available in British-controlled countries. My Nana had somehow managed to procure few grams of quinine sulphate powder and made pills at home for my treatment. Besides quinine, I was given plenty of sodium salicylate mixture to lower the body temperature. Paracetamol had not been introduced then. Of course, other analgesics available then were powder forms of aspirin, phenacetin and amidopyrine. But tablets of these were not available as ships from UK could not reach India safely due to German obstruction on the seas.
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