Paul Wilson Brand (Pioneer and Revolutionary Physician)

Paul Wilson Brand (Pioneer and Revolutionary Physician)
On July 17, 1914, in the Kolli Hills of Tamil Nadu, Jesse and Evelyn Brand, then a missionary in India, gave birth to a son he named Paul Wilson Brand.Paul Wilson

Brand grew up in India until he was sent to the United Kingdom in 1923 to study for academic studies. His father died in 1929 of black water fever, when Brand was 15 years old.At the end of his studies, he first trained as a builder and carpenter, which gave him a remarkable sense of structure and function.
After seeing several regular episodes of dysentery and malaria in India in the region known as "Kolli Malai"; he then felt called to study medicine and entered the Faculty of Medicine at University College Hospital, London. There he met a medical student, Margaret Berry, who would become an eminent ophthalmologist, with a particular interest in the eyes of leprosy patients; they married in 1943.

In 1946, he was invited to join the staff of the Christian Medical College - Hospital in Vellore, India. After a visit to the leprosy sanatorium at Chingleput, a government institution that was then under the direction of the church, Brand was motivated to explore the reasons for the malformations developed in people with Hansen's disease. After careful observation and research, he understood that most injuries in patients with Hansen's disease were the result of the pain insensitivity they had felt and not directly caused by Hansen's disease bacillus.

Before Brand, it was widely accepted that those suffering from Hansen's disease had lost their fingers and feet to rotten flesh. Brand discovered that with treatment and care, victims of the disease could live indefinitely without such deformities.Brand already had an ingrained Christian faith and in 1946 he was invited by Dr. Robert Cochrane, an eminent leprologist and talent researcher, to return to India to teach surgery at The Christian Medical College and Hospital, Vellore, one of the best medical schools in India, with a strong Christian tradition.
This invitation was to determine the future course of his life's work. Shortly after arriving there, Brand became aware of the "mendiants of leprosy", deformed, crippled and often blinded by illness, which earned them social exclusions. Faced with such profound suffering and human misery, Paul and Margaret devoted themselves to the relief of those affected.

Brand has been challenged to find the causes of the terrible causes of leprosy malformations and even more to find an effective treatment for them.
For the first time, the avoided "lepers" were admitted to a general hospital for operations, and Brand enjoyed such success in 1952.

Some quote from Dr. Brand "If I had a gift that I could give to people with leprosy, it would be the gift of pain."

"After years of working with leprosy patients, I learned to rejoice in the feeling of cutting off a finger, turning an ankle or getting into a hot bath." He went on to say, "Thank God for the pain!"

Throughout the years, he has remained humble, and compassionate, and these qualities have manifested himself that he treats a patient, operates, sits in committee or officiating preacher.

Some book written by Dr. Paul Wilson Brand
- The pain that no one wants
- Clinical hand mechanics
- Wonderfully done
- God forever
- In the image of God

D.Z