By the time the Brand family was ready for another furlough at the end of 1957, Paul had two movies to take along—and a fifth baby daughter, his namesake, Pauline, who was born at Vellore on December 2, 1957. Paul’s mother arrived to see the family off on furlough. She was now a wrinkled, bent-over old woman of seventy-eight, a self-supporting missionary living her dream of reaching the hill tribes people of southern India. Sometimes she would bring a leprosy patient down to Vellore for Paul to treat, but she never stayed long, telling him that she had to get back because she had too much work to do.
As his family climbed aboard the ship for the trip home, Paul wondered whether England was ready for six Brand children.
Chapter 14
Honors and Awards
Three weeks after setting out from India, the Brand family arrived back in England in early 1958. On a freezing cold evening in London, Paul stood at the door of Pilgrim Lodge, the home recently bought and redecorated by the Mission to Lepers for use as a home for furloughing missionaries. Paul groaned inwardly as he surveyed the newly wallpapered rooms and noted the pride in the live-in caretaker’s voice. He had a sinking feeling that staying at Pilgrim Lodge would not be an easy transition for the children. After all, they were used to climbing in and out of windows and dangling from parapets at home in Vellore. Thankfully, none of the children did any serious damage to the place. Three-year-old Patricia did manage to draw a “mural” with black crayon on the wallpaper in the living room, and the older children played pranks involving the telephone.
Once back in England, Margaret was left to deal with finding boarding schools for Christopher and Jean and the daily care of the children, while Paul embarked on a rigorous speaking tour. He was determined to help English doctors and Christian groups understand the progress being made in leprosy care and to explain how much more still needed to be done.
One of the things that helped Paul spread the message was the film of him performing the tendon-free graft surgery on a patient’s hand. Paul showed the footage at a meeting of the British Orthopedic Association. The film was a big hit; everyone seemed to want a copy. Soon copies of the film were made and translated into four languages. Medical libraries around the world began requesting copies.
As a result of the film, Paul’s message was being carried farther than he could have dreamed. The film was entered in various contests and festivals. It placed second in the British Medical Association contest, placed first in the German equivalent, and took first place at the Milan Film Festival in the technical films category. Paul—or his hands at least—was a movie star!
As the time back in England on furlough sped by, the Brand family, minus fourteen-year-old Christopher and twelve-year-old Jean, were ready to return to Vellore. Paul was conflicted about leaving two of his children behind in England at boarding school. Although it was accepted that British children whose parents lived overseas would return to England for their education, Paul recalled how hard it had been for him to be separated from his parents. He also remembered that he had never seen his father again. Nevertheless, he and Margaret had agreed that it was the best choice for their two oldest children. With heavy hearts Paul and Margaret said their good-byes to Christopher and Jean and returned to India with the rest of the family.
Paul knew that with his return to the Christian Medical College and Hospital, his role would be changing. During his time at the hospital, he had performed about five thousand reconstructive surgeries on the hands and feet of leprosy patients. Paul had directly performed half the surgeries and had supervised his students as they did the other half. In his absence on furlough, some of the students he had trained proved capable of taking on a full surgery load. It was time for Paul to accept his role on the world stage with regard to the treatment of leprosy. A week after the family arrived back in Vellore, Paul set out for Japan to attend the Seventh International Congress on Leprology.
At the congress Paul challenged leprosy experts to include surgery and rehabilitation in all their treatment programs. “To be cured of active leprosy but left with crippled hands and feet may be a victory over the bacillus, but it is a defeat for the man,” he declared.
On his way back to Vellore, Paul stopped off in Hong Kong, where he met with Dr. Howard Rusk, who was also visiting the city. Dr. Rusk was an American doctor from New York City who was a passionate pioneer for the disabled. As the two doctors discussed disabilities and rehabilitation, Paul wished that Mary Verghese could meet Dr. Rusk. He felt sure that the two of them would get along well and inspire each other to new ventures.
At the hospital in Vellore, the leprosy work attracted a steady stream of visitors wanting to learn from Paul and his team. People came from as far as Switzerland and the Canary Islands. A succession of American surgeons also came to work with Paul, who was constantly teaching and learning from other surgeons, exchanging knowledge that helped to solve the problems they all encountered.
One of Paul’s dreams came true when Mary Verghese sought his advice. Mary told Paul that she longed to study rehabilitation techniques under Dr. Howard Rusk in New York. However, she was nervous about traveling overseas in her wheelchair and fitting into the program with her disability. She told Paul that she would love to come back to Vellore and become the director of a rehabilitation department—something that did not yet exist there.
Paul encouraged her. “I think if you believe that this is something God wants you to do, nothing on earth is going to stop you,” he told Mary.
Mary beamed. She applied to the postgraduate program studying under Dr. Rusk and was accepted. Paul was delighted to see someone he had encouraged, a woman in a wheelchair no less, taking such a big step. He encouraged Mary at her farewell in December 1959 before her departure for New York City by saying, “Because Mary has lost the ability to walk, but not her courage and devotion, who knows how many hundreds of others will be able to stand and walk and run on good, strong limbs.”
Five months after Mary’s farewell, on the afternoon of May 24, 1960, Paul was working at the hospital and received a telegraph consisting of four simple words. Those words had a profound effect on everyone at Vellore: “Aunt Ida has gone.”
When he heard the news, tears began to stream down Paul’s face. Dr. Ida Scudder, founder of the Christian Medical College and Hospital, was dead at the age of ninety. Paul bowed his head and thought about his dear friend who had been so encouraging of his work over the years. He thought of the many times she had sat through his hand surgeries, holding the patient’s other hand and reassuring the patient while Paul operated. He would miss her, and he knew that everyone else at Vellore would also miss her.
Ida’s funeral service was held in front of the main administration block at the hospital, as there was no building big enough to contain the huge crowd that gathered. It seemed as though the whole town of Vellore had come to pay their last respects to a woman who had greatly affected their town and their lives. Paul was asked to give a eulogy at the funeral service. He chose as the text for his remarks Joshua 1:2: “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan.”
As Ida’s body was buried beside that of her mother, Paul reflected on the woman’s amazing achievements. In sixty years, Ida’s work at Vellore had grown from a small dispensary to a huge, modern hospital that treated tens of thousands of patients each year. The hospital employed 735 doctors, nurses, and technicians, most of whom were Indian and worked side by side with fifty overseas staff from more than six countries. The medical college had 795 students in training who were studying medicine, nursing, pharmacy, pathology, radiology, laboratory services, and public health.
Two months after Ida’s funeral, Paul was on the road again. This time he had been invited to Geneva, Switzerland, for three weeks to write informational pamphlets on leprosy treatment for use in World Health Organization programs around the world.
From Geneva, Paul traveled to New York City to receive the prestigious Albert Lasker Award for outstanding leadership and service in the world of rehabilitation. Paul was embarrassed by such personal accolades, but he realized that accepting the award would raise the awareness of leprosy rehabilitation around the world, and he was grateful for that.
While in New York, Paul visited Mary Verghese and was glad to see that she was thriving in the big city and eager to bring the new things she was learning home to Vellore.
From New York, it was on to Sweden to meet with the Swedish Red Cross. After Paul spoke with the organization, the Red Cross made a large donation to help bring rehabilitation to patients in their own homes. This was another of Paul’s dreams come true.
From Europe, Paul hurried home to host the ten-day Scientific Meeting on Rehabilitation in Leprosy, held in Vellore in November 1960. The conference was organized in conjunction with the World Health Organization, the Leonard Wood Memorial Foundation, the International Society for Rehabilitation of the Disabled, and the Vellore Christian Medical College. For Paul this was yet another dream come true. Gathered in one place were some of the world’s leading experts on leprosy and surgery. Many helpful discussions along with surgical and rehabilitative demonstrations took place throughout the conference. Paul and his team of researchers were able to present many of their findings regarding leprosy and its treatment. The detailed research records from the Vellore team stunned the conference attendees. The team presented copious notes and records of every single surgery they had performed, accompanied by a series of photographs before and after the procedure and during the rehabilitation process.
Paul was particularly pleased with two outcomes of the conference. First, the conference unanimously agreed that the lack of nerve sensation in leprosy sufferers should be classified as a major disability. The conference also strongly recommended that from that time on, leprosy should be treated like other diseases and studied in institutions where the medical field could bring expertise to bear. Leprosy had moved beyond the prejudice that had existed toward the disease for centuries. Now it was to be treated like any other debilitating disease, with ongoing research into more effective treatments and rehabilitation practices. Paul could not have asked for a better outcome as he thought back to thirteen years before when Robert Cochrane had told him of the total lack of research on the disease.
That Christmas Paul and Margaret decided to take their children to visit Granny Brand, who was living in the Kalrayan Hills, about one hundred miles southwest of Vellore. Getting to her place was quite an adventure. First they drove to the end of the road. Then they transferred to a Jeep that took them over rough tracks to the foothills of the mountains. From there it was another eighteen miles up into the mountains to Granny Brand’s house. Granny had sent down her pony and some men from the village with a dholi—a sheet of canvas slung between two bamboo poles—to meet the family at the end of the Jeep track. The two youngest children, Patricia and Pauline, rode in the dholi carried on the shoulders of four men. Margaret, Mary, and Estelle took turns riding Granny’s pony, while Paul walked all the way. It was a steep climb up into the hills, and the higher they climbed, the cooler the temperature got. The family finally rounded a bend in the path, where a group of villagers were waiting to welcome them and escort them to Granny Brand’s small house.
Christmas dinner with Granny was very different. Even though Paul and Margaret had brought a fully cooked turkey and all the trimmings from Madras, the family did not get to gather around the table and eat it together. Just before they were due to serve the meal, a woman critically ill with typhoid was carried to Granny’s house. Granny took one look at the woman and dropped everything, spending the rest of the evening and late into the night tending to her.
