Two Parsi doctors from erstwhile Bombay (now Mumbai ), Jal Patel and Jal Daeboo, will be posthumously honoured with one of Pakistan’s highest civilian awards, the Nishan-e-Quaid-i-Azam, on March 23, 2027.
Their decision to keep Jinnah’s condition confidential has since been described as one of the most consequential secrets of the twentieth century. The story was brought to public attention in Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s book, ‘Freedom at Midnight’, on India’s independence . These were professional secrets to be maintained and they did that. The rest is just noise. How could they have shared personal health details of their patient with people outside of the family? He had his own clinic on the ground floor of Bombay House. Xavier’s College. Homai gave an identical version that was rendered to Lapierre by Dr Professor Jal Patel. Jinnah’s lungs X-ray showed that he had tuberculosis that had become terminal and that he had just a year or two to live.”
Patel was conferred with the Padma Bhushan in 1962 for his contribution to medicine, and his portrait hung at Grant Medical College.
The two doctors are said to have remained bound by their Hippocratic oath and medical ethics. The doctor said, “All this talk about these gentlemen being in a position to change the course of history is just conjecture. Javeri said his uncle never married and was the chief medical officer of Tata Sons. “She used to work, part time, as an attending nurse, under study of her father when Jinnah was X-rayed at Dr Jal Daeboo’s clinic in “Dhobi Talau” that is a walking distance from St.
Dr Patel’s relatives still live in south Mumbai. However, far less is known about Dr Daeboo’s family and background.
Apart from being India’s first Indian radiologist, little information is available about him, a Parsi doctor who did not wish to be identified told HT.
Earlier reporting noted: Historian Akbar Ahmed, in his book ‘Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin’, noted that Jinnah had been suffering from tuberculosis since 1930s, when the disease had no effective antibiotic treatment.
