Dr. John Davy was an army surgeon and physician to governor Robert Brownrigg from 1817 to 1819.

Davy came to Kandy with the British troops and lived next to Diyawadana Nilame’s resident in Malabar street.

A military hospital was built in a renovated existing building and was located at the site of the present “Kandyan art association”. Later it served both military and civilians especially for cholera and small pox.

After 1821, Indian laborer's came to Sri Lanka for coffee and later tea enterprises. Civil hospitals were needed due to poor nutrition, cholera and malaria.

Once the civil medical department was separated from the military service, colonial surgeons were appointed to central province. This medical board appointed vaccination officers who were responsible for vaccinating the public against small pox.

In around 1861, an infectious disease hospital was established in Deyyannewela (the small pox hospital). This pauper hospital was later expanded to become the General Hospital Kandy. One of the very first buildings of the Kandy hospital was the cholera ward, opened in 1866.