He attends to hundreds of patients with eye ailments at Disha Eye Hospital in New Town and elsewhere. But there is another identity of his that few of them are aware of.
Dr Samar Kumar Basak specialises not just in corneal and cataract surgeries. He is a stamp collector with a super specialisation. “Many are into medi-philately. But I am interested in ophthaphilately, the collection and study of postage stamps and other related materials connected to ophthalmology. I am the only one pursuing this theme in India. In fact, there are possibly just two more philatelists with this specialisation in the world,” he says.
Basak chanced upon the theme by accident. “I had a general collection and I was teaching my son Soham (now also an eye specialist at Disha) the basics of country-wise philately. But it was not much fun. Then I came to know of thematic collections and realised stamps could also be related to eyes. This was around 1990. I read up books on how to go about building a thematic collection and realised there was so much that could be done.”
A stamp brought out by the German state-run postal service on Dr Eisenbarth, a “miracle doctor” who used to travel from town to town performing cataract surgeries. The top half shows the doctor all set to perform couching, an ancient method of cataract treatment. The bottom half has his assistants playing trumpets and bells to attract patients
Stamps on French Impressionist painter Claude Monet. He had to stop painting due to cataract. After surgery when he resumed, the difference was noticeable. Basak shows that by placing two of his paintings of a Japanese bridge in Giverny done before and after surgery
A stamp from Djibouti in tribute to Covid-19 whistleblower Dr Li Wenliang
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, practised medicine for 10 years. He studied ophthalmology later and set up a chamber near Harley Street
The 64-year-old has a collection featuring over 650 stamps that deal solely with the treatment of eye disorders and its history.
He put up an exhibition on eye care at the New Town hospital on the occasion of Disha completing 25 years, telling the story graphically using pictures of stamps. “You will get an impression of ophthalmology as a whole, right from the beginning. Take the practice of doctors writing Rx at the start of a prescription. Even many doctors do not know why they do so,” he says. Rx is an abbreviation for the Latin word “recipere”, which means “take thou”, and is followed by the prescribed medicines. This Rx symbol is believed to have evolved from the Eye of Horus, an ancient Egyptian symbol associated with healing power. Ancient Egyptians used the eye of Horus as a magic sign to protect themselves from disease, suffering and evil.
Pointing to a picture of a stamp brought out in Egypt for the 15th International Ophthalmological Congress in 1937 (see right), he says: “You might simply take this to be a beautifully drawn eye. But when you find this to be the eye of Horus, then it becomes linked to the myth of the first organ transplant.”
He shows an issue of Greece, featuring a kylix (drinking cup) with a pair of stylised eyes on them. “The Greeks believed that if someone drank wine from the cup, it would ward off the evil eye,” Basak says.
He is as excited when he speaks of a stamp with a picture of a horse rider with an arrow stuck in the right eye. “This is Harold II, the last crowned Anglo Saxon king. He was injured in the battle with the Normans in 1066. One theory is he died in the battlefield while another claims he managed to flee and died two years later,” he says. But the UK 4p stamp depicts the undisputed fact of him being shot in the right eye, as borne out by the Bayeux Tapestry, a 230ft long embroidered cloth that chronicles the events culminating in the Battle of Hastings.
There are several stamps on types of treatment, anatomy of the eye, eye investigations and diseases.
Famous patients
He has stamps of figures in the fields of art, culture and politics, like James Joyce, Joseph Pulitzer, Claude Monet, Anton Chekov and Theodore Roosevelt who had acute vision problems.
When John Milton became bilaterally blind, the poet got his daughter to write as he dictated. “There are eight to 10 other stamps on Milton. But those would not allow me to tell this story. So I chose this miniature sheet from Hungary which shows him reciting poetry to his daughter and also added the sonnet On His Blindness,” Basak said.
Basak has exhibited at a conference in the US as also on sidelines of medical conferences in India and has even got awarded for it.
But he has never exhibited in philatelic exhibitions. “I will not part with my original stamps (which is a mandatory condition there). I use printed pictures,” he said.
Another interesting picture he uses is of a se-tenant block of two UK stamps. One is of Harold Ridley, who “changed the eye industry”, and the other is of a Spitfire fighter plane.
Basak shares the story: “Ridley treated Royal Air Force pilots, many of whom suffered eye injuries from splinters of the plane’s canopies, which were made of a fine glass fibre, called polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). He observed that the splinters caused no reaction, despite being lodged inside the eye for a year or more, unlike most foreign bodies which caused severe pain. They only suffered loss of vision due to the injury. He thought of getting intra-ocular lens manufactured with that purest form of plastic. Ridley became the first ophthalmologist to perform an IOL implant, in a London hospital in 1949.”
Basak keeps his antenna up for new issues on the theme. “Dealers notify me if a new stamp comes out.”
He made use of the lockdown period by arranging his collection in better order. He has already authored a delightful book, titled Ophtha-Philately: A Journey in Ophthalmology through Postage Stamps of the World in 2007. “My next plan is to bring out a coffee table book on my collection,” he smiles.
Do you have an interesting hobby or collection? Write to saltlake@abp.in