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SOME OBSERVATIONS IN BENGALI PATIENTS
OP Kapoor
Hon. Visiting Physician, Jaslok Hospital and Bombay Hospital, Mumbai, Ex. Hon. Prof. of Medicine, Grant Medical College and JJ Hospital, Mumbai 400 008.
During the last 2-3 years, I have been seeing a lot of Bengali patients. My impression is that most of them are involved in jewellery business. Many of them come from Calcutta to Bombay at a young age of around 20 and remain here for a couple of years with the result that the full blooming youth they have to go through in Bombay in order to help their families in Bengal. There are other Bengalis who are middle aged and have a good financial status and have settled down in Bombay for a number of years and who do not do any manual work but employ other Bengali boys. The disease pattern in these two sets of Bengalis is different.
Most of the Bengali bachelor boys work very hard as much as 16 to 18 hours per day. Often they are involved in some sort of "blowing" during the process of melting gold. Most of them work in dark closed spaces with inadequate ventilation and live in crowded single rooms. For years they have not eaten home food. Their diet is very poor in calories and proteins and most of them are underweight.
Because of the hard work most of them get addicted to chewing tobacco or smoking and weekly or biweekly alcohol in moderate quantity. Most of them have sexual problems because of bachelorhood and the incidence of positive HIV in these boys is high. Many of them come for symptoms of pulmonary or extra pulmonary tuberculosis. Bronchial allergy is quite common in this population and in some of them is kept up the "blowing" which is involved in their jobs.
Although, they come from Bengal, I have seen only once a patient having visceral leishmaniasis. Most of these Bengali babus are very health conscious and with minimal symptoms they land up with the doctors. They do not mind spending for all the investigations to remove their suspicion and want to be told off and on that they are healthy and have no serious disease. They follow the doctors instructions very well and are very compliant.
Other type of patients mentioned above are often overweight and very well nourished. Most of them come for minimal symptoms and some of them are diabetic. Many of them have symptoms of tension of business. Blood tests for HIV are very often negative in this population whose families are often present in Bombay.
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