Western medicine arrived in India with the Portuguese. Portuguese doctors were few and far between but attempted to train up medical specialists in India.
The East India Company ships to India travelled with medical officers. And the company established medical departments wherever they were located. But which were the first proper medical colleges in India?
India's first medical college & institute of tropical medicine was set up by the French. Called Ecole de Medicine de Pondicherry, it was established by French colonists in 1823. French Navy doctors trained and issued Medicin Locale certs.
In 1835, Kolkata gained its first med school, to educate Indians, regardless of caste. Madhusudan Gupta conducted the first human dissection in 1836 marking a milestone, observed as West Bengal's Medical Education Day.
Government General Hospital came into existence in 1647, primarily to provide medical care to troops of the East India Co. Later, on February 2, 1835, Madras Medical College began.
Goa badly needed doctors in the 16th c. The Portuguese were dying like flies -- Goa was called cemetery of the Portuguese. Escola Medico Cirurgica de Goa started up in 1842.
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Surgeon John McLennan began Bombay Presidency's 1st medical school in 1826 near Azad Maidan. It failed. Governor Sir Robert Grant prioritised meticulously establishing a new medical college. He died before it opened in 1845.
After treatment for what was likely diabetes by a Scottish doctor, Nizam of Hyderabad, Asaf Jah V immediately began a medical school. Hyderabad Medical College was born in 1846, headed by the Scots doctor William Maclean.
First called Thomason Hospital, the East India Company funded and started up this school in 1854 for British military physicians.
It began life in 1864 as Glancy Medical College all the way in Lahore, named for Punjab governor Sir Bertrand James Glancy but moved to Amritsar in 1920
It began to turn out hospital assistants at its inception in 1871; 14 students graduated in its first batch. The college expanded considerably in 1879 with a donation of Rs 20,000 from famous Bombay philanthropist Byramjee Jeejeebhoy.