Erasmo Dias

Dr. Dias was born in Goa, in June 1861. After some years' schooling there he came to Bombay and studied at St. Xavier's High School. He passed the Matriculation in 1879, winning the Cowasji Jehangir Latin Scholarship. He then joined the College where he won the Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney Scholarship of Rs. 125 for standing first in the English Essay competition among Portuguese boys. From St. Xavier's he went to the Grant Medical College from which he passed out in 1885, after winning a number of scholarships.

He first worked as a G.I.P. Ry. doctor, but after a few years he settled in Poona as a private practitioner. He was an able, conscientious, painstaking medical man, who gave his help willingly and generously to the poor of all castes and creeds alike. For his own community he had, however, a very special love, and its poor looked on him as their special friend.

He was also a leader looked up to with respect and confidence by all. In the Cantonment he was a well-known man, and his abilities in various directions enabled him to render many services as a member of the Cantonment Board on which he served for twenty years. As a physician he rose to be President of the Poona Medical Society.

But his work during the plague epidemic in 1897 stands out among many others as showing his whole-hearted sympathy for the sick. He threw himself into his work with a zeal which showed that he was ready to risk his life at any moment to help them if possible. Lord Curzon in a speech at Poona gave him a public recognition for the services rendered to the plague-stricken.

(St. Xavier's College Magazine, February 1928)