Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/35

 '''13. NATIVE DOCTORS'''.—Every medical officer in charge of native troops and jails, is assisted by one or two native doctors whose duty is to compound medicines and see that they are taken; to attend the sick in the absence of the surgeon; and perform the minor operations of surgery. Previous to 1835, these young men were educated at the Calcutta Medical School, superintended by the late Dr. John Tytler, and all expressly for the public service. About this time the above school was abolished and the New Medical College instituted in its stead.

14. NEW MEDICAL COLLEGE.—This institution was founded in 1835 as an improvement upon the old Tytler school to supply the demands of the subordinate medical department and to diffuse European skill amongst the native community. At first, there were only three professors appointed to it, but these have from time to time been increased in number, till the College is placed on a scale of efficiency equal to our Home Schools of Medicine. The professors now amount to twelve, all members of the medical service; the students amount to about 240, and there is a magnificent new hospital attached, capable of containing two or three hundred patients. The prejudices of the natives against the taint of dead bodies has been overcome, and practical dissection is carried on at all seasons and with alacrity; degrees and