Revisit your old haunts

(My grateful thanks to Prof. Rohan Jayasekara, Dean, Faculty of Medicine, Colombo, for giving me permission to take these photographs).

For a slide show, click on the link below.

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=2AbuXDFo5YslELY

To see pictures with explanatory captions, scroll down (Sanath, please let me know if there are errors in the captioning. Captions can be edited).

View of the main building from the National Hospital entrance.  

                                                                            



Let's begin with the place where our late Dean Prof. Abhayaratne used to stand and survey the surroundings as a daily routine.

Prof. Rajasuriya never used the stairs. He patiently waited for the lift/elevator.

Old canteen is now a part of the new Common Room.

Another section of the Common Room with the same old billiards table that we used!

New canteen in the old vacant space near the side entrance to the common room, clock tower and cycle shed. 

                                 The separate side entrance to the common room, now "permanently" closed.

                             The seat in the Dean's office that one of our own (Sanath Lama) occupied not long ago.
                                                      

Portraits of past Deans adorn the walls of this office to which we had very limited access as students.   

 This gentleman holding the door is Sisira who was assigned by Prof. Rohan Jayasekara to accompany me round the complex. The Ladies' Common Room of yesteryear (opposite the Dean's Office) now houses the Dean's supportive staff.

 We didn't have them those days! This "Computer Room" is opposite the section that University Medical Officer Dr. Alles occupied in the sixties.

 Department of Community Medicine (called Public Health during our time)

 Entrance to the library

The library looks the same even after half a century.

We are now on the top floor. We spent many hours in this lecture theatre.

The clinical departments

The Pathology Block which also housed the Departments of Bacteriology, Parasitology, Forensic Medicine

New building that has come up in this quadrangle.

The quadrangle serves as a car park

The Pathology Block from another angle

Entrance to the Physiology Block

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology as it is now called

Francis Road where the JMO's Office is situated

Entrance to the Anatomy Block

The corridor leading to the dissecting rooms. Photographs on the walls on either side have been temporarily removed because of ongoing renovations.

Dissecting room. Immovable porcelain slabs have given way to movable trolleys

Another view of the dissecting room

 

A meeting room in the Old Anatomy Block (fully renovated)

 

A tutorial room. I was told that this is where freshly brought bodies were embalmed in pre-renovation days.

"Old" Anatomy lecture theatre undergoing renovation. This is where we had Prof. M.J. Waas' lectures

This is where the Formalin well (used to preserve cadavers) was located

The "New" Anatomy lecture theatre has been demolished. It had been hurriedly constructed to accommodate the "Three Hundred Batch" in 1960.

Another view of the same site

Same site with buildings on Maradana Road in the distance. Note the concrete piling for planned construction of a new multi-storey building

Narrow roadway leading to the quadrangle car park from the Francis Road entrance

Rear view of the Physiology Block from Norris Canal Road

Norris Canal Road that runs close to the Anatomy Block