Remembering Dr. Henry Holland
It is a sad commentary on the society that allows destruction of its patrimony or heritage. One such legacy destroyed by neglect or design is the Mission Eye Hospital in Shikarpur. It has evoked many emotions and a bit of nostalgia. They have helped me to retrieve from the memory bank four or five days I spent in the hospital as the caretaker of a friend’s aged father who had the eye surgery done there in the early part of 1953. I can recall seeing both Dr. Henry Holland and his son Dr. Ronald Holland making the rounds and doing the surgeries. There were hundreds of eye patients, most of them accompanied by their relatives or friends. What a delightful experience it was for me to spend a few days watching the varied scenes. The news about the hospital’s structural decay made me do a little research on Dr. Henry Holland, his son, and several other people both local and foreign who worked long and hard to alleviate pain and suffering of hundreds of thousands of human beings in Balochistan (Quetta, Sibbi, etc.) and Sindh (Shikarpur, Khairpur, Karachi, etc.) for decades.
Dr. Henry Holland came to the Quetta Mission Hospital (established in 1886) in the year 1900 when he was barely 25. He soon found himself performing eye surgeries in Quetta, Sibbi and Jacobabad. As the word-of-mouth spread, patients from Sindh started to make the long haul to the eye camps in Sibbi and Jacobabad. Seth Hiranand, a prominent banker of Shikarpur, used to provide financial support to many who needed help for the trip to the distant eye camps. In 1909, he visited Dr. Henry Holland probably in Sibbi and asked him to start a clinic in Shikarpur, for which the Seth would give land, material for structures, and money for food, shelter, etc. to care for the patients and those accompanying them. Dr. Henry Holland agreed to the generous proposal, provided the local community, particularly the city elite and those holding municipal power, agreed to the project and he was allowed to pray and preach. There was stiff resistance to the idea because of Dr. Holland’s association with a Christian mission engaged in spreading the Gospel to Hindus and Muslims. Seth Hiranand threw a challenge to his opponents, both Hindus and Muslims: find me a doctor of Dr. Holland’s quality and dedication and who is not a Christian!
The Seth won the battle and invited Dr. Holland and his team to establish the clinic in Shikarpur for eye operations in the months of January and February every year. The first clinic (call it a camp) was held in 1910 in almost primitive conditions. Significantly, in the 1920s and 1930s, Dr. Holland’s pioneering work in ophthalmology attracted many physicians and surgeons from Britain and some other countries of Europe, USA, Canada, and Australia to spend time working at the clinic. He turned the Mission Hospital of Shikarpur into one of the prominent facilities for eye care in the world. Seth Hiranand, before his premature death in 1913, set aside a sizeable fund of Rs.100,000 (conservatively equivalent to Pak Rs.105 million today) with trustees to maintain the clinic (structures, supplies, food, and shelter) and meet the expenses incurred by Dr. Holland, his colleagues, and staff.
Sadly, the trustees mismanaged the endowment badly and the eye hospital had to depend on personal and institutional donations. A second landmark for the hospital was the visit of Lord Hugh Dow, Governor of Sindh, and his wife Lady Dow in 1946. Thanks to their efforts, many private and public donations followed, helping to rebuild the hospital structures and refurbish its facilities. The eye hospital in Shikarpur followed a policy of cross-subsidisation: payments from patients who could afford the expenses and private donations were used to provide free treatment, food and shelter to the majority who had could not afford the expenses. This practice was in keeping with the wishes of Seth Hiranand and the spirit of the Mission Dr. Holland represented.
Dr. Holland formally retired in 1948 and handed over the mission hospitals in Quetta and Shikarpur to his son Dr. Ronald Holland. But the good old doctor performed numerous eye surgeries at Shikarpur each year from 1950 to 1956. In 1958, he published an autobiography, Frontier Doctor; he passed away at 90 in England in 1965. My reading of the autobiography has given me a glimpse into his extraordinary life and many happy and not-so-happy episodes he has recorded. In his long career, the Frontier Doctor treated many thousands of ordinary patients, most of them moderately or severely poor, with great care often in trying circumstances. He also treated many prominent individuals, among them the Khan of Kalat and the Sardars of the Marri and Bugti tribes, the Wali of Swat, the rulers and sardars in Rajputana, the Raja of Shigar in Baltistan, and the Kings of Afghanistan. Several of these individuals gave donations in cash or kind for the mission hospitals. When called by the colonial government, Dr. Henry Holland also managed the health facilities in Balochistan (Quetta and Sibbi) and Sindh (Hyderabad) for extended periods.
The monument in Shikarpur was founded, built, and managed by individuals committed to alleviate pain in a difficult environment. Besides Dr. Henry Holland and Seth Hiranand who laid the foundation of the hospital, many other locals and foreigners gave their money, time, and energy to enhance the well-being of many thousands of sufferers of eye and other diseases. What an exhilarating experience it must have been for many to see after suffering from near-blindness or relieved of suffering from other acute ailments.
Several questions come to mind about the demise of the hospital. How did it happen? Years of callous neglect and willful destruction seem to have been at work. But then why? Is it that those in power in the city and others with private means and influence have abandoned their responsibility to a valuable common cause? What has erased their civic pride? Or is it part of a larger and more complex phenomenon? Are the obstacles insurmountable? I do not know the answers. Nor do I wish to conjecture. May be someone better equipped than I would enlighten us to understand the apparently incomprehensible.
