RUMOURED CHANGES IN THE BENGAL MEDICAL SERVICE. Paragraphs have been going the round of the newspapers of late, to the effect that the Bengal Medical Service is about to be

arrangements of the native army handed Inspector-General of Her Majesty's British forces, a civil medical service organized, and that the members of the present service are to have the option of electing for one or other department. The most recent and most positive statement of this sort has appeared in the Pioneer of the 26th October, " which, after informing the public that the officers of the Bengal Medical Service will be shortly called upon to elect for military or civil employ,"?"trusts that Government will, by wise and abolished, over

the medical

to the

liberal treatment, render the death of this fine old service

as

easy as possible." The service is, no doubt, duly grateful to the Pioneer for its kind wishes, but it would be much more satisfac-

tory

for its members to know what "reason" this paper, whose

^November 1, utterances are the

REVIEW".

1871.]

supposed

to be

officially inspired,

has to

"

believe"

which other papers have stated with more caution. If these "reasons" are not very strong and well founded, the rumour

mischievous consequences of promulgating, with

ity

and

certainty,

announcements of this

an

kind,

air of author-

can

hardly

Men's mind become unsettled, and the steady

overrated.

tented performance of duty becomes most difficult, while ings, which, perhaps, had better not exist, are engendered.

bo

con-

feel"We

have become aware that the members of the Medical Service have read these newspaper paragraphs with most serious appre-

hension,

and we have received letters

show that

anxiety

a

strong and very general

exists.

It

were

announcement of greater All the inquiries which

well could this

authority

regarding them, which feeling of doubt and feeling be allayed by an

than that which excited it.

have been able to make have

given impending dissolution of the service, which have been so industriously circulated of late, and we, further, feel assured that Government will never require men to " elect" for anything whose conditions have not been placed before them in detail, nor ask a certain proportion of the medical officers of the Indian Medical Service, to surrender their commission and the covenant under which they entered the service, without providing and offering a full and fair equivalent. "We shall return to this subject in our next number, but, meantime, would counsel men to disregard these rumours, until some stronger earnest of their truth exists, than a second- hand newspaper paragraph which bears improbability on the face of it. no

confirmation of the

we

rumours

of

243