Chennai :

More than 50 years ago when many doctors were leaving India in search of green pastures, Dr Krishnamoorthy Srinivas returned home. The clinical neurologist, who had ensured free or subsidised but quality care for all his patients since then, breathed his last in a private hospital at Mylapore at 6.10am on Wednesday. He was 84.

“He went into coma on Sunday and never woke up,” said his son Dr Ennapadam S Krishnamoorthy, a neuropsychiatrist.

Senior doctors, patients, industrialists and several eminent people paid their last respects to Dr Srinivas who had always looked into his patients’ eyes and listened to them.

After landing in Chennai with three FRCPs and intensive training in Canada, Dr Srinivas worked in Voluntary Health Services, a hospital founded Dr K S Sanjeevi, and in the Public Health Centre at West Mambalam.

“I started my training in July 1959 at Montreal, Canada. Fifty-six years have passed since I entered neurology. Essentially, I am a clinical neurologist with interests in the welfare of patients, especially in patient care, in clinical diagnosis and teaching. I follow Sir William Osler’s obiter dictum—placing research after the above are done,” he wrote for a commentary in Neurology India journal in 2015.

Dr Srinivas belonged to the rare breed of doctors who encouraged patients to speak more in his consultation room.

One of his students, senior neurologist Dr AV Srinivasan recalled how he would tell his postgraduates. “Hurry, hurry, listen to the patient, he is giving us the diagnosis.”

He sent them for tests and prescribed medicines only if was convinced that they were necessary. “It is not that he did not believe in scans or other diagnostic tests. He used technology only to enhance his clinical skills,” Dr A V Srinivasan.

Though research came last, he has authored several papers in peer reviewed journals. He loved teaching and worked as an honorary professor at the Madras Medical College and in several other medical colleges.
He set up the Institute of Neurological Sciences at the VHS and brought eminent scholars in neurology to speak on fascinating topics such of the brain and mind that would interest not just doctors, but members of the public as well.

On Wednesday, as he bid adieu, one of his patients, 74-year-old R Venkatraman, said, “His work is done. He may now rest forever.”

The last rites will be held in the Mylapore crematorium at 5pm.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News> City News> Chennai News / Pushpa Narayan / TNN / November 01st, 2017