A Winter in India

The purpose of our trip to Lucknow was to visit the Dental Hygiene School at King George’s Medical and Dental College. Dean Mahesh Verma of Maulana Azad Dental College and Hospital arranged for Pam and I to meet with Dr. Jaya Dixit who is the head of the Department of Periodontics.
We stayed at tyhe Guest House at the Central Drug Research Institute. The Central Drug Research Institute (photo on the right) is located in the former palace of the Nawab of Oudh. In 1856 the British East India Company removed the last Nawab, a particularly inept ruler, from Lucknow to Kolkata and paid him an annual stipend of £120,000. This bit of diplomacy put in motion the preparatory acts by Indian nationals that produced the Mutiny of 1857 against British colonialism. India calls this 5 month mutiny the First War of Independence. The Guest House does not look as though it has been repaired since the Nawab left.

Photo on the left shows the Periodontics Clinic where third year dental students and Dental Hygiene students are learning how to clean teeth. Note that the hygiene students (in blue) are mostly men. Lucknow is the only government-run dental school that has a dental hygiene school. Dave exchanged curricula with them, and they were very interested to see the curriculum from University of New England. Pam gave a research presentation on her work with her mouse model for periodontal disease. The post graduate perio students do research projects, many of which had to do with testing Ayurvedic herbal compounds, so they were interested in comparing results.