Jamini Bhushan Ray

Jamini Bhushan Ray (1879-1926) was an Indian physician and Sanskrit scholar from Khulna, Bengal, who trained in both Western medicine and traditional Ayurveda, earning a medical degree from Calcutta Medical College in 1905 and a master's degree in Sanskrit. In 1916 he founded the Ashtanga Ayurveda College and Hospital, one of Bengal's earliest institutions to teach Ayurveda through formal instruction rather than the traditional hereditary and apprenticeship system, and he established the Vaidyaraj Pharmacy to bring systematic preparation and quality control to Ayurvedic medicine production. He wrote on diagnosis, pediatrics, toxicology and diseases of the ear, nose and throat, and served as president of the Seventh All India Ayurvedic Conference in 1915, arguing for reconciling classical Ayurvedic learning with modern scientific medicine.