S. Rangachari

Sarukkai Rangachari (1882 to 1934), titled Diwan Bahadur, was a medical practitioner, surgeon and gynaecologist from the Madras Presidency in British India. Born near Kumbakonam, he joined Madras Medical College in 1900, graduated in 1904 and entered government service as an Assistant Surgeon in 1906. In 1917 he became Deputy Superintendent of the Egmore Women's and Children's Hospital, the first Indian to hold that post, and he served there as surgeon until 1922, when he left government service to practise privately at the Kensington Nursing Home on Poonamallee High Road, where he often treated patients for free. He visited patients first by cycle and motorbike, then by Rolls-Royce, and finally in a Puss Moth aeroplane of his own, which earned him the name Flying Doctor. He died during a typhoid epidemic in 1934, and the public of Madras paid for a statue of him that stands near the Government General Hospital in Chennai.