Prince Mahidol: the father of modern medicine in Thailand

This week the people of Thailand should take the time to pay their respects to HRH Prince Mahidol of Songkhla, the late father of HM the King, for his role in bringing the practices and ideas of modern medicine and public healthcare to the Kingdom nearly a century ago.

Born on January 1, 1892, Prince Mahidol started laying the foundations for both of these important areas back in the 1920s through his revolutionary contributions to higher education, especially in the fields of the basic sciences, public health, medicine, nursing and medical research.

Based on observations he made while serving in the Royal Thai Navy, Prince Mahidol decided that Thailand needed to greatly improve the standards of its professional medical practitioners and of the country’s public healthcare in general, as he believed that improvements in these fields would play an essential role in national development.

As a first step he sought to lay the foundations for the teaching of the basic sciences, which at the time were lacking, and even provided some of his own money to establish scholarships so that a group of six talented students would have the opportunity to study physics, chemistry and biology in England, which was a first for Thai students.

These students later formed the core of the first well-qualified teaching staff in these fields in Thailand. Over time, more teachers were trained to instruct Thai students in other fields of the applied sciences, resulting in a lasting improvement in medicine and public healthcare.

In the process of implementing the first effort at institutional development in these areas, Prince Mahidol himself had occasion to study medicine and public health.

In 1921 he earned a Certificate of Public Health and in 1928 the degree of Doctor of Medicine from Harvard University. During his residence at the premier US medical school, he also negotiated on behalf of the Thai government an agreement with the Rockefeller Foundation for assistance to develop medical and nursing education in Thailand.

As director-general of the then University Department of the Ministry of Education, he was personally involved in the implementation of the assistance agreement with the US-based foundation and later headed the committee that established the Siriraj School of Medicine, which was the first of its kind in this country.

These achievements show that Prince Mahidol was a far-sighted educational planner as well as a skilled hand at institutional development.

As the founding father of Siriraj medical school, Prince Mahidol taught preventive and social medicine and later worked as a resident doctor at McCormick Hospital in the northern province of Chiang Mai, where he personally tended needy patients and even donated his own blood to treat them.

By his determination and wide-ranging efforts Prince Mahidol affirmed the noble principle of the dignity and worthiness of every human being, regardless of their social origin, property, birth or any other measure of status.

In fact his advocacy of the spirit of brotherhood towards all human beings was well known at the time, and some of his maxims for medical students remain highly respected even to this day.

Among his more memorable statements on the subject are: “I do not want you to be just a doctor: I also want you to be a man” and: “True success is not in learning but in its application to the benefit of mankind.”

This humanistic outlook also made its mark on the lives of his consort, HRH the Princess Mother; his eldest daughter, HRH Princess Galyani Vadhana; his first son, HM King Ananda Mahidol; and his youngest son, HM the King, as well as the members of His Majesty’s family.

And in the words of Professor AG Ellis, a former dean of Siriraj medical school, Prince Mahidol “was born to make the world a better place”.