End of a Legend: Dr Bento Egipsy

End of a Legend: Dr Bento Egipsy


Born on October 27, 1925, in a Calangute family of distinguished medical lineage, Dr Jose Bento do Rosario Souza Egipsy, was one of the seven children of late Clara and late Dr Eduardo Egipsy, the gynaecologist and anaesthesiologist. Dr Bento completed the five-year Licentiate at Escola Medica-Cirurgica de Goa in 1959, and worked as a lecturer in surgery at the GMC and as a health officer in Pernem.

On November 5, 1956, the Portuguese government selected him for overseas study scholarship at the renowned Coimbra University in Portugal. He earned the degree in Medicine and Surgery in such colours that he was selected for three scholarships in a row, which made him a superspecialist surgeon.

With training in cardiovascular surgery at the Centro de Cirurgia Cardio-Vascular da Zona Zul in Lisbon, he assisted its director Dr J Decio Ferreira in operations and experimental surgery. He was awarded the British Council scholarship for training in speciality thoracic surgery at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital at Birmingham in England. Dr Bento worked at the Thoracic Surgical Centre at Bromsgrove and was elected member of the Thoracic Surgeons of England.

On his return, he was appointed Surgeon Specialist and redesignated Superintendent of the Sanatorio St Jose at Margao, then the only centre for thoracic surgery in the entire Konkan region. With path-breaking surgeries and the first-ever Pneumomectomy for cancer of the lung and others, young Dr Egipsy shot into prominence, performing thousands of complicated surgeries at the TB Sanatorium and at his own hospital (Casa de Saude). Dr Bento even replaced a part of a patient's lung with a ping-pong ball and amputated a part of the lung to arrest the fast spreading disease. The patient lived into old age.

He leaves behind his widow Tessie. His elder son Dr Ivan is an ENT specialist at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai and the second son Dr Yurii is postgraduating in Obstetrics and Gynaeocology.

When a patient suffering from terminal cancer asked Dr Bento how long he would live, the good doctor told him "longer than me". He was right because he succumbed to coronary blocks, discovered some four years ago by Dr Francisco C Colaco.

But Dr Bento remained ever humble unassuming which endeared him to patients far and wide. Dr Bento updated his knowledge of medicine continuously by pouring over medical journals even after a hard day's work. When Dr Bento breathed his last on February 14, 1999, many wept bitterly because he was a family surgeon to thousands. Doutor Ejipsy readily attended to anyone who knocked at his door at any time of the day and night. They hadn't seen a doctor better and more understanding than him.

Writes Max de Loyola Furtado in Mirror/Herald, "When the pall-bearers lowered the coffin into the final resting place at the Holy Spirit cemetery, on February 15, 1999, it was the internment of an era, the burial of Goa's pioneering spirit, if not the final adieu to a blithe spirit that so adeptly blended medical expertise with missionary charity."

Courtesy: Valmiki Faleiro and Max de Loyola Furtado