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The nurse who painted
S. MUTHIAH
I have in the past referred to Lt. Col. Charles Donovan in this column and his discovery — simultaneously with William Leishman in Britain — of the parasite that causes kala-azar. Donovan was Professor of Biology (Physiology) at the Madras Medical College and, simultaneously, Superintendent of the Royapettah Government Hospital when the discovery was made in 1900.
Now, Dr. A. Raman of New South Wales University, who has been looking into Madras medical history as a break from academia, tells me that Donovan was helped in his later work by a nurse at the Royapettah hospital. Mrs. Amy Anna Caroline Skelland was widowed in 1907. Two years later, she had qualified as a nurse at the Government General Hospital. She was transferred to the Royapettah Hospital and, before long, had become Matron there. Donovan, as Superintendent there, stated that she was very good in microscopical work and had been a great help in keeping records of special cases that might interest him. She was also an exceptionally meticulous artist and two collections of her detailed work — watercolours of cases at Royapettah Hospital and of microscopical preparations at Royapettah Hospital during the period 1917-1921 — are in the Wellcome Trust Library in London.
Donovan, too, was a competent artist as well as a naturalist. His collection of watercolours on Balanophoreae, a fleshy parasitic tropical plant found in Burma, is also in the Wellcome Library.
And after retirement in his native Ireland, he wrote an illustrated book on the large moths and butterflies of Ireland. In India, he had been interested in both birds and butterflies.
Of Donovan there is much material, but Skelland the talented artist intrigues me. She apparently lived until 1972, when she was 89. I wonder where? And I wonder who knows more about her.
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