Page:A History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600-1913 Vol 1.djvu/13



PREFACE My interest in the history of the Indian Medical Service was first aroused in 1884, when I was serving as Resident Surgeon of the Medical College Hospital, Calcutta, by reading an article by the late Surgeon Major Norman Chevers, in the Calcutta Review for 1854, No. 45, Vol. XXIII, entitled Surgeons in India, past and present. This article was nominally a review of the List of Medical Officers of the Indian Army, compiled in 1839 by Messrs. Dodwell and Miles, a long-dead firm of East India Agents. This work purports to give a list of all medical officers serving in the three Presidencies, from the foundation of the Service in 1764, up to 1838, with the dates of their commissions in each rank, and of their death or retirement. In the previous year, 1838, the same firm had published a list of combatant officers serving in the armies of the three Presidencies from 1764 to 1837. I found a copy of this Medical List in the Medical College Library; glanced over it, read it, and then studied it carefully. I then began to bring the list up to date, for my own amusement, and in so doing found that it was very imperfect. The information given is usually correct, as far as it goes, but the list is far from complete. I have gradually collected the names of some two hundred medical officers who served in India during the seventy-four years the list covers, whose names are not included in the list.

I had some vague idea of publishing the results of my researches at some future time, i.e. Dodwell and Miles' list, with the additional information I had acquired about the period it covers, and that necessary to bring it up to date. Such a list, it appeared, would be the better for some prefatory notes on the history of the Service. This proposed preface has gradually grown into the present large book.