Photograph of the Edulji Dinshaw Dispensary in Karachi, taken by an unknown photographer, c.1900, from an album of 46 prints titled 'Karachi Views'. Karachi, once the capital of Pakistan, is now the capital of Sindh province and the major port and main commercial centre of the country. It was a strategically located small port (Kharak Bunder) at a protected natural harbour on the Arabian Sea north-west of the mouth of the Indus, and was developed and expanded by the British, when they took over Sindh in the mid-19th century, to serve the booming trade from the Punjab and the wheat and cotton regions of the sub-continent. This charitable dispensary was built with funds provided by Edulji Dinshaw, a local Parsi gentleman who had risen from poverty to become the largest landowner in Karachi. Constructed in 1882, it was the first building in the city designed in the 'Italianate' style, influenced by the Italian Renaissance. It was one of three dispensaries in Karachi towards the end of the nineteenth century and provided treatment for over a hundred patients a day.