Medical find put Batavia on the map

Medical find put Batavia on the map

By Ida Indawati Khouw

The following is the 43rd in a series on protected buildings
and sites appearing in Saturday editions of The Jakarta Post.
This week's report highlights two buildings that played
significant roles in the country's medical development, the
central figure of which is Dutch doctor Christiaan Eijkman, who
discovered vitamin B1 deficiency.

JAKARTA (JP): The capital's former name, Batavia, was once
widely recognized by the medical establishment following the
remarkable discovery of vitamin B1 by Dutch physician Christiaan
Eijkman.

In recognition of his finding, upon which modern concepts of
vitamins are based, Eijkman (others name him Eykman) was awarded
the Nobel prize in 1929.

The great revelation proved that Batavia was not an old-
fashioned town at the time.

In the 1920s, ancient Jakarta was already home to two research
laboratories -- Centraal Geneeskundig Laboratorium (The Central
Medical Laboratory) and Het Koningin Wilhelmina Instituut voor
Hygiene en Bacteriologie (The Queen Wilhelmina Institute for
Hygienics and Bacteriology).

After having many kinds of uses throughout the years, the
buildings today house Lembaga Biologi Molekuler Eijkman (Eijkman
Institute for Molecular Biology), located on Jl. Diponegoro, and
Laboratorium Mikrobiologi Universitas Indonesia (Microbiology
Laboratory of the University of Indonesia), on Jl. Cikini, both
in Central Jakarta.

The second building has been classified as protected, but the
status of the Eijkman Institute remains unclear.

Eijkman himself never worked at there. The building was named
after the Nobel laureate and was uses for medical research which
was initially developed by Eijkman.

The Dutch neurologogy expert arrived in Batavia in 1886 as a
military physician. He worked with a team to study the serious
and often fatal neurological disorder called beriberi disease,
characterized by edema, pareses developing into paralysis and
complicated by congestic heart failure which often lead death.

Beriberi was frequently seen in the Dutch East Indies (old
Indonesia) especially by those living in crowded buildings, such
as the military, prisoners and psychiatric patients, says a book
titled Christiaan Eijkman Physician, Utrecht University Professor
and Nobel Laureate published by Utrecht University.

Eijkman continued his research here, even though members of
his team returned to the Netherlands two years later.

The physician became the first director of the research
laboratory for pathology and bacteriology at the military
hospital in the Weltevreden area (currently Gatot Subroto
Military Hospital on Jl. Abdul Rahman Saleh in Central Jakarta).

The research laboratory at the military hospital was
established due the vast spread of the beriberi epidemic at the
time.

In his 1890 research on chicken, feeding them with rice
without husks, Eijkman concluded that the husks of the rice
contained thiamine (vitamin B1). Thiamine deficiency cause
beriberi.

"All kinds of tests were made to find the cause of those
epizootic but without success. Later, attention was drawn to the
fact that the sickness began a month after the chickens were fed
with cooked rice from the military hospital," L.S.A.M. von Roemer
said in his book Historical Sketches, an Introduction to the
Fourth Congress of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical
Medicine.

The discovery was such a breakthrough that it formed the basic
concepts of modern vitamins, a paper on the Eijkman Institute for
Molecular Biology said.

The laboratory where Eijkman made the discovery grew so fast
that it became too small to accommodate the number of scientific
researchers.

In 1916, the laboratory moved to a vast complex on Jl.
Diponegoro, the same location as Centrale Burgelijke
Ziekeninrichting (popularly known as CBZ, the Central Civil
Hospital, presently Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital) and the
medical college of Geneeskundige Hoogeschool now on Jl. Salemba.

The research laboratory was then renamed the Central Medical
Laboratory, and later, at its 50th birthday, the Eijkman
Institute to respect the noted Dutch scientist.

The institute was the most prestigious and internationally
acclaimed research institution ever established in Indonesia and
was visited by many big names in the scientific community, such
as Robert Koch, the discoverer of tuberculosis bacteria, who was
there place during a sabbatical, according to executive manager
of the Eijkman Institute Herawati Sudoyo.

The institute played a major role during epidemics of tropical
diseases such as cholera, dysentery and malaria in the 19th
century in the shabby and crowded town of Batavia.

"The institute has contributed so much to tropical medicine.
The E Coli test to check water contamination by human feces, for
instance, was called Eijkman test in the past," Herawati said.

People at that time paid such little attention to hygiene that
diseases caused by bacteria grew faster. One reason why such an
institution was badly needed.

"To answer the need, in 1927 the Dutch colonial government
built another laboratory on Pegangsaan Oost street (now Jl.
Cikini), which separated the Eijkman Institute," said Firman
Lubis, lecturer at the School of Medicine of the University of
Indonesia.

This laboratory, the Queen Wilhelmina Institute for Hygienics
and Bacteriology, then became a division of the medical college.

Firman, who is involved in the planning of a book on the
school of medicine's 150th anniversary, said the Dutch government
was also interested in the development of biological science
because they needed healthy workers for their plantations.

The new tropical style complex mainly consisted of three
blocks surrounded with a five-meter-high wall of granite.

The laboratory also had huge yards at the sides, which were
once used as open spaces for various kinds of vivisection on
animals such as monkeys, goats and rabbits.

"Through various experiments, laboratory assistants here
produced various medicines, including a vaccine for smallpox,
serums for typhus, cholera and dysentery -- also known as TCD
serum," Firman said.

The building witnessed sadder times during the Japanese
occupation between 1942 and 1945.

At that time, hundreds of Romusha (forced labor) were
vaccinated so they would be immune to various diseases. But some
of them died as a result of the vaccinations.

"The Japanese government then accused the laboratory
assistants of sabotage. They were captured and interned," Firman
said.

The microbiology and Eijkman laboratories have now become a
city asset.

"We never had any documents stating that our building is
protected, I think it is included in the protected Cipto
Mangunkusumo General Hospital," Herawati said.

After being neglected for more than 30 years, the Eijkman
building was renovated in 1993 even the work was not done by
building restoration experts.

The 5,500-square-meter-wide complex forms a square with a park
at its center. It has a tropical architectural style with a high
roof and open veranda facing toward the park, which is used as a
parking lot.

Its veranda, ventilation bars, windows and other parts which
give access to the open air, have been closed off by glass since
the management equipped the building with air-conditioning.

But by doing so, the genuine parts of the building can be
saved.