Kandalla, Ludi Marylone (c. 1947 – 1972)

Ludi Marylone Abdulkarim Kandalla M.B. Ch.B. L.M.S.S.A. M.F.Hom ( c. 1947 – 18 June 1972) was an Anglo-Iraqi homeopath, who was applying for a license to practice in America. She was one of sixteen homeopaths who died in the Staines Trident air disaster in June, 1972.

Ludi was House Physician at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital between 1970-71. Her sister Kay (Kawther) Theresa Kandalla M.B. Ch.B. M.R.C.S. L.R.C.P. (c. 1945 – 18 June 1972) also died in that terrible crash, and although had started to become interested in homeopathy, she never actually practiced homeopathy, although she apparently prescribed remedies recommended by Ludi.

Homeopaths and homeopathic supporters including Isabel Campbell, Dudley Wooton Everitt, Marjorie Golomb, Elizabeth Sharp Hawthorn, Sergei William Kadleigh, Joan Mackover, John Robertson Raeside, Mary Stevenson, Elizabeth Somerville Stewart and Thomas Fergus Stewart, also died in that fatal crash.

Their father, Fuad Abdulkarim Kandalla (d. 1980), was also an homeopathic physician.

An Obituary for both sisters was provided by Dr. Marianne Harling in the British Homeopathic Journal vol. 61, no. 4. (October, 1972), page 251-2:

Ludi and Kay Kandalla were the only children of a prominent Baghdad physician, Dr. F. K. Kandalla, who, not content with what he had learned in his own country, at the Harvard Medical School, and at the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London, turned in middle life to the study of Homoeopathy. What he found so thrilled him that he determined that his daughters should share his work and carry it further, and they both duly studied medicine and qualified at the University of Baghdad. After that, however, they proved to be as independent and inquiring as their father had been, and both decided to learn all they could of Western orthodox medicine before committing themselves to one branch. One after another, to the distress of their parents (but perhaps also to their father’s grudging admiration) they came to England, took their medical Finals again, and settled down to work in this country for several years.

Ludi was the first to feel the pull of Homoeopathy. Disillusioned with house-jobs in orthodox hospitals, she came to the Royal London Homoeopathic Hospital as House Physician in October 1970, and stayed until May 1971. She will be remembered for many things: her decorative appearance, like some great Assyrian goddess; her spontaneous laughter; her refusal to compromise in any way with what she felt to be incompetence or injustice in staff or colleagues, contrasted with the gentleness and understanding she showed when dealing with patients; her punctual discharge letters to GPs; her considerable early promise as a homoeopathic prescriber.

She became an Associate of the Faculty of Homoeopathy, and gained Membership in February. She hoped to join a homoeopathic general practice.

Her sister Kay never practised Homoeopathy, though she had begun to show an interest in it, and sometimes gave her patients remedies suggested by Ludi. Kay’s main interest lay in gynaecology, and her ambition was to achieve a higher qualification, practice either in England or in America, and make a home for her parents when they retired. More petite and feminine than her younger sister, she was also more practical and single-minded. There was great affection between them. They had an apparently unlimited capacity for enjoyment, and whilst Ludi was going to the Brussels Congress, presumably, to deepen her contacts with Homoeopathy, Kay was going explicitly “for fun”.

The Kandalla sisters were Assyrian Christians, members of an ancient religious group in communion with the Catholic Church which had seen much persecution, and which had had to hold its own for centuries against Islam. They were happy warriors who loved life and loved living dangerously. It would be inappropriate to wish them Eternal Rest. Let us wish them Eternal Joy.

We sympathize most deeply with Dr. and Mrs. Kandalla on the loss of their beautiful, vital and talented daughters.

Memorial Address, given by Dr. Llewelyn Ralph Twentyman, at the Memorial Service commemorating those who died in the aircraft disaster. Held at the church of St. George the Martyr, Queen Square, London W.C.1, on Thursday, 29 June, 1972. Printed in the British Homeopathic Journal vol. 61, no. 3 (July, 1972), pages 130-133:

LUDI KANDALLA and her sister Kay came from Baghdad, came from the great and mighty race of Assyrians, and when I was there at the end of the war I came to have a deep respect for the grandeur of their race. When Ludi came to the Hospital I could see the same qualities in her, descendant of the mighty Assyrians. You had only to look on the face of her and her sister (Kay) and you can see those same faces in the galleries of the British Museum on those ancient Assyrian reliefs. Lovable, uncompromising – full of vitality and youth – but you do not speak to an Assyrian about compromise – warriors, warriors for what they believe in. This was what was striking and great in the enthusiasm and youth which we learnt to love in Ludi and her sister Kay.