Page:A History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600-1913 Vol 1.djvu/139

 CHAPTER IX

WILLIAM HAMILTON, AND THE EMBASSY TO DELHI

" Ambassador from Britain's Crown And type of all her race."

Sir Francis Doyle, The Private of the Buffs.

The records of the Embassy to Delhi in 1714-17 have fortunately been preserved in full. They consist of the records of Consulta- tions held by the three members, Surman, Stephenson, and Khwaja Sarhad, of their Diary, and of the letters sent by them to Calcutta and Madras. The letters to Madras are addressed to Edward Harrison, President of Fort St. George, those to Calcutta to Robert Hedges, President of Fort Wilham. Copies of the letters to Calcutta were also sent to Fort St. George, and have been preserved among the Madras Cons., 1715-17 ; the India Office also has copies of all these Proceedings, including the letters. The original letters to Fort WiUiam presumably were destroyed, with all other records, when the Fort was taken and sacked in 1756. The later letters, from Nov., 1716, to Nov., 1717, are also preserved in the India Office in the Copy Book of Letters received from Mr. Surman, dc", at the Mogul's Court." All these documents. Cons., Diary, and Letters, have recently been pubUshed in the late Professor C. R. Wilson's Early Annals of the English in Bengal, Vol. II, Part II (Calcutta, 1911), from which are taken the extracts given later on. A few of the letters were also published, in 1875, in Early Records of British India, by J. Talboys Wheeler, pp. 170-185.

Of all the medical officers who have served in India during the past three centuries, Wilham Hamilton is probably the most famous, and is certainly the one who has been the greatest benefactor of his country. The story of Gabriel Boughton may be in part apocryphal, but there is no doubt of the reality of the services of William Hamilton to his country, and to his masters,

H.I. M.S. — VOL. I. I