Dr. Puliyur Krishnaswamy Duraiswami
The pioneering orthopaedic surgeon who built the foundations of modern bone and joint surgery in India

Puliyur Krishnaswamy Duraiswami was born on 23 April 1912 in the village of Puliyur in Tamil Nadu. Though he first studied mathematics, he soon turned to medicine and graduated MBBS from the University of Madras in 1936. He obtained his MS in 1942 and began his career at the Government Royapettah Hospital in Madras. During the Second World War he served as a surgical specialist in the Armed Forces.

After the war he went to Britain for advanced training. At the University of Liverpool he earned the MCh in Orthopaedics in 1948, the FRCS in 1949, and in 1951 a PhD — the first doctorate the university had ever awarded for original research in orthopaedics. His thesis explored the experimental production of congenital skeletal defects. The British Orthopaedic Association honoured him with the Robert Jones Medal and the Presidential Merit Award; he was also appointed a Hunterian Professor.

In 1953 the Government of India invited him to return and take charge of the newly created Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi — the first professorship of orthopaedics in the country. He also helped establish the Central Institute of Orthopaedics at Safdarjang Hospital and served as its director. Later he became senior orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital and advised the Director General of Health Services on orthopaedics and rehabilitation. It was he who conceived and implemented the idea of mobile medical units to take care into remote rural areas.

He published widely, including a notable historical paper, “5000 Years of Orthopaedics in India.” In 1965 he served as President of the Indian Orthopaedic Association. The following year the Government of India awarded him the Padma Bhushan.

Colleagues remembered a surgeon of precision and quiet determination. One young resident, watching him operate on a complex congenital deformity, later recalled Duraiswami saying:

“The bone remembers what the body has suffered. Our task is to help it forget the injury and remember how to grow straight again.”

Puliyur Krishnaswamy Duraiswami died on 11 March 1974 after a cerebral haemorrhage. In the story of Indian doctors he occupies a foundational place: the Tamil surgeon who brought modern orthopaedics to independent India, trained a generation of specialists, and ensured that the healing of bones and joints would reach even the most distant villages.