SIR RANALD MARTIN
To Sir
the officers of the Indian
Joseph Fay re r,
Medical Service
*
under
a great obligation for from oblivion the valuable services of rescuing one of their most eminent members. Probably no man has done so much as Sir James Ranald Martin for the interests of Preventive Medicine
in
India,
cessful in
and
are
certainly
improving
no one
has been
the status and
Medical Officers in the to the publication of Sir
Army
so
suc-
prospects
of India.
of
Prior
Joseph Fayrer's biogra-
phy last year, few medical officers now in India knew anything of Sir Ranald Martin, be}7ond the fact that he originated the iodine injection treatment of
h}7drocele,
and that there is
his name at the
morial Medal
bearing School, Netley. of a century has elapsed seventy-ninth year, after Medical
distinguished
scarcely
a
Me-
Army quarter
since his death in his an honoured and most
career as one
of the
Surgeons
Yet
a
of the
great Military
century.
born in 1796 in the Isle of Skye, and came of a good old Scots stock, many of whose descendants have made honourable names for He
was
themselves in Scotland, France, Germany and India. He studied medicine in Londou under such great teachers as Sir Everard Home, Sir Benjamin Brodie and Sir Charles Bell; qualified when he was barely eighteen and-a-half 3Tears of age, and landed in Calcutta at the end of the year months.
after a voyage lasting nearly six With Calcutta he was intimately asso-
1817,
during the greater portion of his twentyyears' service in India. His Military service commenced in Fort William, where he served with H. M. 17tli, 59th ciated two
and G7th
Regiments, and was also AssistantGarrison-Surgeon. During the rainy season of 1818 he took part in the campaign to repress
the rebellion in Orissa. ness
There
was
much sick-
amongst the troops, his opinion
was
con-
sulted, and the carrying out of his recommendations proved so satisfactory that it was found unnecessary to relieve the troops. In 1820, lie accompanied the Ramgarh Battalion, which
despatched healthy districts was
to subdue
the Kols in the
un-
of Singhbhum and Sambalpur. suggested the expediency of keeping the regiment on the dry and elevated banks of the He
*
Inspector-General Sir James Ranald Martin, c.B., p.u.s. By Surgeon-General Sir Joseph Fayrer, Bart., A. D. Innes & Co., Bedford Street, London.
298
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
Mahanadi; regiment
but his advice
was
the result
located
was
a
on
was
swampy
ignored,
the
ground,
and
high death-rate during: the o
o
[August
1898.
With his return to Calcutta in March, 1826, military medical service terminated. Turning to Sir Ranald Martin's career in the
Martin's
In 1821, he was put in medical charge of the Governor-General's Body-Guard, and he speedily introduced extensive sanitary improve-
Civil Medical Department, we find that he was first attached for duty to the Presidency General
ments in
the
he officiated
with the
Body-Guard
rains.
sent
to
regimental
suppress
the
cantonment.
when the
He
regiment
was was
mutiny in the 26th, Infantry Regiments at
47th and 62nd Native Barrack pur in November, 1824. The following month he sailed with his regiment for Rangoon to
in the first Burma war. This for two years and resulted in the
participate
dragged OP
on
loss of about 20,000 lives, chiefly from scurvy, fevers, and dysentery, besides involving an expenditure of over ?14,000,000. In addition to his multifarious medical duties, Martin had to
the end of 1817. In 1819, Assistant at the same hospital; in
Hospital, Calcutta, at 1823 he and He
was
again
appointed
First
Assistant-Surgeon,
in 1826 he acted in the
same
capacit}7. Hospi-
last associated with the General
was
tal in
as
1829, when he officiated
Surgeonhe acted as Superintendent Garrison-Surgeon at Fort William. Thus he had ample opportunities for laying the foundations of that intimate knowledge and experiat the
same
time
as
as
of tropical diseases as they affect Europeans, for which he became afterwards so well-known. Incidentally we learn that the Presidency function as a combatant officer at times, and on General Hospital must have been started about the year J 768. In 1828, he was promoted to one occasion he led a charge. With reference to this incident, Sir J. Fayrer the rank of Surgeon, when he had little more than ten years' service, and was appointed to remarks:? as officiate " Surgeon to the Governor-General. He did, in short, what has not unfrequently been In he was made Presidency Surgeon, which 1830, done by other members of his service, and proved that of all his duties as was a not much more lucrative post in those days was he performing only capable a medical officer, but that when the need arose, he was than at the present time, when the duties have ence
capable of performing those of a combatant been so much increased. thus showing how unreasonable is that classiofficer, In November of the same year, he succeeded fication which still places the medical officer amongst Mr. Nicholson in the charge of the Native the non-combatants, an invidious distinction which is discredited by the history of almost every military of Calcutta, and from 1833 to 1835 he no
less
Hospital
in which the troops have come in conflict carried oil Mr. Nicholson's work in addition to with the enemy, and where the medical officer neceshis own duties. In March 1832, he devised and sarily shares all the dangers incurred by others."
expedition
During this war, another instance occurred of a Commanding Officer refusing to take Martin's advice concerning the site of a camp. The close to
practised the cure of hydrocele by injection of tincture of iodine, the form of treatment which has met with more general acceptance than any other up to the present time. Throughout his
swamp, instead of service in India, Martin had been a martj'r to The result was malarial fever, and his health became so severethat several officers and men lost their lives ly affected in the latter part of 1839 that he from disease, and Martin himself became so was obliged to leave the country in January, prostrate with fever that he had to be carried 1840, at the early age of forty-three, and at a one hundred and twenty miles in a doolie, and time when he was the leading medical practi-
tents on a
pitched neighbouring were
a
elevation.
back to India in shattered health. It tioner in Calcutta. So popular was he amongst that, during the first year's campaign, his friends and patients, that they presented forty-five per cent, of the British troops perished him with an address at a meeting in the Town from disease, while only three and-a-lialf per Hall, presided over by Sir John Peter Grant, cent, were killed in warfare. In fact, the disease and with a costly piece of plate of the value of was sent
is noted
appalling than that of the four hundred guineas. ill-fated Walcheren expediTurning to the record of Sir Ranald Martin's much-quoted and the result of tion, and was largely ignoring public services in India, we find that he was of and commencing and instrumental in promoting a number of
mortality
was more
hygienic precautions, carrying on operations during
healthy
season
of the year.
the most
un-
tant
schemes, and in
ful issue.
impor-
bringing
them to
a
success-
August
SIR RANALD
1898.]
MARTIN, C.B.,
F.R.S.
299
to think that the calling attention of authority subordi- disposed to them, for the important purposes stated, will prove one nate native medical education have resulted in of the moist valuable results arising from the plan of the present curriculum of study for calling on Military Surgeons for notices of the medical
His
report (18S0)
and
suggestions
producing
Civil and Military
tant-Surgeons
Hospital
on
Assistants and Assis- topography of the country generally. In 1837, Martin brought forward College
at the Calcutta Medical
a
proposal
and other Medical Schools in India. In 1835, for remedying the defects in the statistical rehe proposed a scheme for reports on Medical cords and reports in Military and Civil Hospitals This he Topography and Statistics by all Civil and Mili- throughout the Bengal
Presidency.
tary Medical Officers, which was accepted by Government; and in 1837, carrying his own suggestion into practice, he produced a valuable Report on the Climate and Topography of
succeeded in
after a considerable About this time, also, he submitted various memoranda on improving the Indian Medical Service. One of the most im-
introducing
amount of opposition.
In the years previous, he submitted portant results of his efforts was that promotion Government a plan for the sanitary im- to the higher grades, or to administrative rank, merit and ability, in place of provement of Calcutta, including the drainage was accorded Calcutta.
to
by seniority. Another advantage he secured was a instituted a greatly improved scale of pensions according to Commission of Inquiry, on which he acted for length of service. Hitherto Surgeons of twenty a or couple of years. thirty years' service and upwards were retired It was in 1836, also that he advised the es- on the mere pittance of ?191 per annum; but, tablishment of a large Native Hospital, which to Martin's exertions, the pensions were owing was first called the Fever and later Hospital, raised by gradations, according to length of became the Medical College Hospital, ?an adservice, up to ?700. His brother officers, in junct for the clinical teaching of the students Bengal, manifested their gratitude by presenting at the Medical College, as well as an institution him with a testimonial in the form of a piece for the treatment of the sick poor. In replv of plate worth ?250. to a letter from Martin, Lord Auckland wrote Martin landed in England in May 1810, and, approving of the plan, 3Tet giving a significant on his health improving, he settled in London hint, which might be more fully acted on even before the end of the year. Here he made the at the present day. acquaintance of Dr. James Johnson, the author of the
adjacent salt-water lakes. Martin's suggestion Government
Acting
on
oo
the plans of your committee shall be more have great pleasure in laying them shall I matured, before the Government ; but at the same time I must be permitted to say that I see Avith some regret in this city, the habitual and almost entire reliance upon the Government for very many of these works of charity, which in our own country are founded, and warmly adopted and permanently supported, by the liberality and imder the operations of the humane sympathies of individuals." "A s
soon as
In 1837 Martin
was
appointed
a
member of
a
of a standard work Climates latter
the
on
pursuaded
the
Influence of Tropical European Constitution. The on
him to collaborate in the pro(1811) of this book,
duction of the sixth edition and Martin
contributed articles
on
remittent
and chronic
fever, hepatitis, cholera, splenic cachexia, medical topography, and the prevalence of disease amongst European soldiers. acute
But it
until 1850, after a loner exof patients from India, the West Indies,
was
not
'
o
perience China, Africa, Australia, South America and the India. The result of the labours of this Comthat Martin published a series Mediterranean, mittee appeared in 1842 as the Dispensatory, by of on the diseases of essays Dr. O'Shaughnessy, who was the Secretary. Europeans on their return from climates. Later, in 1856, he Another proposal of his, in the same year, was the tropical elaborated a larger work on these into removal of British troops from the plains to the essaj's The Influence of Tropical Climates on European mountains all over India during the hot and Committee
rainy "
on
seasons.
the Materia Medica of British
To quote from Martin
Have we not in our Asiatic
:?
possessions any mountain tracts, conveniently situated, wherein the European soldier might live in vigour, through the advantages of a better climate and the proper application of his own labour ? And if so, why are they not made use of? That such valuable localities abouud no one can doubt, and I am
Constitutions. In
he retired from
May 1842,
the Indian
and commenced private practice But his interest in the public service continued unabated, and in July of the same Medical
Service,
in London.
year, he drew up
a
memorandum
on
Barrack and
300
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
Hospital Accommodation, to the Colonial
Office,
which he submitted
and which afterwards
bore fruit in Galton and Sutherland's
reports
on
hospital and barrack construction. In 1843, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and was appointed a member of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of Large Towns and Populous Districts in England and Wales. It was due entirely to his initiative that Medical Officers of Health in large cities were appointed, and it was owing to his exertions that these posts were not con-
[August
1898.
such well-known facts. (h) The justice of representing strongly and perseveringly to Her Majesty's Ministers the claims of their officers to share reasonably, and in a far larger proportion than they do at present in the military honours and decorations which are granted for services in the field, (j) But the most galling, the most unmeaning and purposeless regulation by which a sense of inferiority is imposed upon medical officers, is by the refusal to them of substantive rank. (m) It is impossible to imagine what serious justification can be offered for a system which, in respect of external
position, postpones service to inexperience, cunning to ignorance, age to youth ; a system which gives a subaltern who is hardly free from his drill practice precedence ferred on Attorneys. The following year he over his elder, who, perhaps has served through every a went to study sanitation in Paris, and wrote a campaign for thirty years; a system which treats member of a learned profession, a man of ability, skill and series of valuable reports on the subject, which experience, as inferior to a cornet of cavalry just enterproved of use to the English Commission. ing on the study of pay and audit regulations ; a system, In 1845, in conjunction with Dr. John Grant in fine, which thrusts down grey-headed veterans below of the Bengal Army, he wrote a biography of beardless boys." Dr. Robert Jackson, which they published with The concessions asked for have been, and are the third edition of that great Army Surgeon's on the Formation, Discipline and Economy of Armies. In this year, he made a strong representation on the injustice of not
classic work
conferring
similar to those
officers
officers,
honours and distinctions
and it
was
given
to
on
medical
combatant
greatly owing to his advocacy were made eligible for the It was chiefly owing to the
that medical officers Order of the Bath.
opinions and advice of Martin of the Indian Medical
and other members
Service, expressed
memoirs, that Lord Dalhousie
in able
influenced to
was
draw up an important State paper, from which the following paragraphs are selected :? "
There have already been found in the ranks (of the Indian Medical Service) many men of the highest capacity and value, who elsewhere would have won a And I will be answerable European reputation for it, that the Medical Service of the East India Company will be surpassed by none in the its Civil or Military branch."
Lord Dalhousie ities the following
urged upon points :?
world,
either in
the Home author-
"
(a) That the existing inequalities between the position of the medical officer and his brother officers, in respect of pension, honour and rank, shall cease. Such inequalities are founded 011 110 (b)
of
?
?
?
been,
grounds
?
justice, expediency or policy, or can
be
alleged regarding
no
valid
reason
has
ever
for maintaining them, (e) The a medical officer as a non-com-
absurdity of batant is, I believe, abandoned, (f) The medical officer fire like other men. comes constantly under Every the names of medical compaign which is fought exhibits officers in the list of killed and wounded, and the returns invariably show that they are still more often victims to their
own
ing comrades, (g)
exertions Proof
011
can
behalf of their sufferhardly be required of
being gradually and grudgingly granted, and each improvement has been followed by increased efficiency in the Medical Service. It
was
on
of Sir
account
that
the
representations College became recognized cine
and
Surgeons.
Surgery by In
1845,
he
Ranald Martin's
Calcutta as a
the was
Medical School of Medi-
Royal College elected
a
of
Fellow of
the
Royal Society. In 1857, he was put on the Royal Commission to inquire into the organization, government and direction of the Medical Department of Her Majesty's Army. In 1858, he
was
made the
pointed by the question
member of a Commission apCollege of Physicians to consider
a
of the Nomenclature of Diseases. he was appointed Physician In January of State for India in Council. to the Secretary 1859
In the same year, he became a member of a Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the
Army in India, which Commission continued till May, 1863. In 1860, Lord Herbert, as Secretary of State for War, recommended him for a K. C. B.; but, owing to some technical objection, a C. B. and had the honour of on him at the same time. conferred Knighthood President of the Medical made was he In 18G4, India the Office, a post that he occuBoard at at the close of 1874. death pied till his that others will follow Sir It is to be hoped
he
was
created
Joseph Fayrer's example and give interesting biographies of such
us
equally
well-known
members
of the
Hamilton,
O'Shaughnessy, Chevers, Goodeve, Vandyke Carter, Bryden and Maclean.
Dymock,
Indian Medical
Service
as
To Sir
the officers of the Indian
Joseph Fay re r,
Medical Service
*
under
a great obligation for from oblivion the valuable services of rescuing one of their most eminent members. Probably no man has done so much as Sir James Ranald Martin for the interests of Preventive Medicine
in
India,
cessful in
and
are
certainly
improving
no one
has been
the status and
Medical Officers in the to the publication of Sir
Army
so
suc-
prospects
of India.
of
Prior
Joseph Fayrer's biogra-
phy last year, few medical officers now in India knew anything of Sir Ranald Martin, be}7ond the fact that he originated the iodine injection treatment of
h}7drocele,
and that there is
his name at the
morial Medal
bearing School, Netley. of a century has elapsed seventy-ninth year, after Medical
distinguished
scarcely
a
Me-
Army quarter
since his death in his an honoured and most
career as one
of the
Surgeons
Yet
a
of the
great Military
century.
born in 1796 in the Isle of Skye, and came of a good old Scots stock, many of whose descendants have made honourable names for He
was
themselves in Scotland, France, Germany and India. He studied medicine in Londou under such great teachers as Sir Everard Home, Sir Benjamin Brodie and Sir Charles Bell; qualified when he was barely eighteen and-a-half 3Tears of age, and landed in Calcutta at the end of the year months.
after a voyage lasting nearly six With Calcutta he was intimately asso-
1817,
during the greater portion of his twentyyears' service in India. His Military service commenced in Fort William, where he served with H. M. 17tli, 59th ciated two
and G7th
Regiments, and was also AssistantGarrison-Surgeon. During the rainy season of 1818 he took part in the campaign to repress
the rebellion in Orissa. ness
There
was
much sick-
amongst the troops, his opinion
was
con-
sulted, and the carrying out of his recommendations proved so satisfactory that it was found unnecessary to relieve the troops. In 1820, lie accompanied the Ramgarh Battalion, which
despatched healthy districts was
to subdue
the Kols in the
un-
of Singhbhum and Sambalpur. suggested the expediency of keeping the regiment on the dry and elevated banks of the He
*
Inspector-General Sir James Ranald Martin, c.B., p.u.s. By Surgeon-General Sir Joseph Fayrer, Bart., A. D. Innes & Co., Bedford Street, London.
298
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
Mahanadi; regiment
but his advice
was
the result
located
was
a
on
was
swampy
ignored,
the
ground,
and
high death-rate during: the o
o
[August
1898.
With his return to Calcutta in March, 1826, military medical service terminated. Turning to Sir Ranald Martin's career in the
Martin's
In 1821, he was put in medical charge of the Governor-General's Body-Guard, and he speedily introduced extensive sanitary improve-
Civil Medical Department, we find that he was first attached for duty to the Presidency General
ments in
the
he officiated
with the
Body-Guard
rains.
sent
to
regimental
suppress
the
cantonment.
when the
He
regiment
was was
mutiny in the 26th, Infantry Regiments at
47th and 62nd Native Barrack pur in November, 1824. The following month he sailed with his regiment for Rangoon to
in the first Burma war. This for two years and resulted in the
participate
dragged OP
on
loss of about 20,000 lives, chiefly from scurvy, fevers, and dysentery, besides involving an expenditure of over ?14,000,000. In addition to his multifarious medical duties, Martin had to
the end of 1817. In 1819, Assistant at the same hospital; in
Hospital, Calcutta, at 1823 he and He
was
again
appointed
First
Assistant-Surgeon,
in 1826 he acted in the
same
capacit}7. Hospi-
last associated with the General
was
tal in
as
1829, when he officiated
Surgeonhe acted as Superintendent Garrison-Surgeon at Fort William. Thus he had ample opportunities for laying the foundations of that intimate knowledge and experiat the
same
time
as
as
of tropical diseases as they affect Europeans, for which he became afterwards so well-known. Incidentally we learn that the Presidency function as a combatant officer at times, and on General Hospital must have been started about the year J 768. In 1828, he was promoted to one occasion he led a charge. With reference to this incident, Sir J. Fayrer the rank of Surgeon, when he had little more than ten years' service, and was appointed to remarks:? as officiate " Surgeon to the Governor-General. He did, in short, what has not unfrequently been In he was made Presidency Surgeon, which 1830, done by other members of his service, and proved that of all his duties as was a not much more lucrative post in those days was he performing only capable a medical officer, but that when the need arose, he was than at the present time, when the duties have ence
capable of performing those of a combatant been so much increased. thus showing how unreasonable is that classiofficer, In November of the same year, he succeeded fication which still places the medical officer amongst Mr. Nicholson in the charge of the Native the non-combatants, an invidious distinction which is discredited by the history of almost every military of Calcutta, and from 1833 to 1835 he no
less
Hospital
in which the troops have come in conflict carried oil Mr. Nicholson's work in addition to with the enemy, and where the medical officer neceshis own duties. In March 1832, he devised and sarily shares all the dangers incurred by others."
expedition
During this war, another instance occurred of a Commanding Officer refusing to take Martin's advice concerning the site of a camp. The close to
practised the cure of hydrocele by injection of tincture of iodine, the form of treatment which has met with more general acceptance than any other up to the present time. Throughout his
swamp, instead of service in India, Martin had been a martj'r to The result was malarial fever, and his health became so severethat several officers and men lost their lives ly affected in the latter part of 1839 that he from disease, and Martin himself became so was obliged to leave the country in January, prostrate with fever that he had to be carried 1840, at the early age of forty-three, and at a one hundred and twenty miles in a doolie, and time when he was the leading medical practi-
tents on a
pitched neighbouring were
a
elevation.
back to India in shattered health. It tioner in Calcutta. So popular was he amongst that, during the first year's campaign, his friends and patients, that they presented forty-five per cent, of the British troops perished him with an address at a meeting in the Town from disease, while only three and-a-lialf per Hall, presided over by Sir John Peter Grant, cent, were killed in warfare. In fact, the disease and with a costly piece of plate of the value of was sent
is noted
appalling than that of the four hundred guineas. ill-fated Walcheren expediTurning to the record of Sir Ranald Martin's much-quoted and the result of tion, and was largely ignoring public services in India, we find that he was of and commencing and instrumental in promoting a number of
mortality
was more
hygienic precautions, carrying on operations during
healthy
season
of the year.
the most
un-
tant
schemes, and in
ful issue.
impor-
bringing
them to
a
success-
August
SIR RANALD
1898.]
MARTIN, C.B.,
F.R.S.
299
to think that the calling attention of authority subordi- disposed to them, for the important purposes stated, will prove one nate native medical education have resulted in of the moist valuable results arising from the plan of the present curriculum of study for calling on Military Surgeons for notices of the medical
His
report (18S0)
and
suggestions
producing
Civil and Military
tant-Surgeons
Hospital
on
Assistants and Assis- topography of the country generally. In 1837, Martin brought forward College
at the Calcutta Medical
a
proposal
and other Medical Schools in India. In 1835, for remedying the defects in the statistical rehe proposed a scheme for reports on Medical cords and reports in Military and Civil Hospitals This he Topography and Statistics by all Civil and Mili- throughout the Bengal
Presidency.
tary Medical Officers, which was accepted by Government; and in 1837, carrying his own suggestion into practice, he produced a valuable Report on the Climate and Topography of
succeeded in
after a considerable About this time, also, he submitted various memoranda on improving the Indian Medical Service. One of the most im-
introducing
amount of opposition.
In the years previous, he submitted portant results of his efforts was that promotion Government a plan for the sanitary im- to the higher grades, or to administrative rank, merit and ability, in place of provement of Calcutta, including the drainage was accorded Calcutta.
to
by seniority. Another advantage he secured was a instituted a greatly improved scale of pensions according to Commission of Inquiry, on which he acted for length of service. Hitherto Surgeons of twenty a or couple of years. thirty years' service and upwards were retired It was in 1836, also that he advised the es- on the mere pittance of ?191 per annum; but, tablishment of a large Native Hospital, which to Martin's exertions, the pensions were owing was first called the Fever and later Hospital, raised by gradations, according to length of became the Medical College Hospital, ?an adservice, up to ?700. His brother officers, in junct for the clinical teaching of the students Bengal, manifested their gratitude by presenting at the Medical College, as well as an institution him with a testimonial in the form of a piece for the treatment of the sick poor. In replv of plate worth ?250. to a letter from Martin, Lord Auckland wrote Martin landed in England in May 1810, and, approving of the plan, 3Tet giving a significant on his health improving, he settled in London hint, which might be more fully acted on even before the end of the year. Here he made the at the present day. acquaintance of Dr. James Johnson, the author of the
adjacent salt-water lakes. Martin's suggestion Government
Acting
on
oo
the plans of your committee shall be more have great pleasure in laying them shall I matured, before the Government ; but at the same time I must be permitted to say that I see Avith some regret in this city, the habitual and almost entire reliance upon the Government for very many of these works of charity, which in our own country are founded, and warmly adopted and permanently supported, by the liberality and imder the operations of the humane sympathies of individuals." "A s
soon as
In 1837 Martin
was
appointed
a
member of
a
of a standard work Climates latter
the
on
pursuaded
the
Influence of Tropical European Constitution. The on
him to collaborate in the pro(1811) of this book,
duction of the sixth edition and Martin
contributed articles
on
remittent
and chronic
fever, hepatitis, cholera, splenic cachexia, medical topography, and the prevalence of disease amongst European soldiers. acute
But it
until 1850, after a loner exof patients from India, the West Indies,
was
not
'
o
perience China, Africa, Australia, South America and the India. The result of the labours of this Comthat Martin published a series Mediterranean, mittee appeared in 1842 as the Dispensatory, by of on the diseases of essays Dr. O'Shaughnessy, who was the Secretary. Europeans on their return from climates. Later, in 1856, he Another proposal of his, in the same year, was the tropical elaborated a larger work on these into removal of British troops from the plains to the essaj's The Influence of Tropical Climates on European mountains all over India during the hot and Committee
rainy "
on
seasons.
the Materia Medica of British
To quote from Martin
Have we not in our Asiatic
:?
possessions any mountain tracts, conveniently situated, wherein the European soldier might live in vigour, through the advantages of a better climate and the proper application of his own labour ? And if so, why are they not made use of? That such valuable localities abouud no one can doubt, and I am
Constitutions. In
he retired from
May 1842,
the Indian
and commenced private practice But his interest in the public service continued unabated, and in July of the same Medical
Service,
in London.
year, he drew up
a
memorandum
on
Barrack and
300
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE.
Hospital Accommodation, to the Colonial
Office,
which he submitted
and which afterwards
bore fruit in Galton and Sutherland's
reports
on
hospital and barrack construction. In 1843, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and was appointed a member of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of Large Towns and Populous Districts in England and Wales. It was due entirely to his initiative that Medical Officers of Health in large cities were appointed, and it was owing to his exertions that these posts were not con-
[August
1898.
such well-known facts. (h) The justice of representing strongly and perseveringly to Her Majesty's Ministers the claims of their officers to share reasonably, and in a far larger proportion than they do at present in the military honours and decorations which are granted for services in the field, (j) But the most galling, the most unmeaning and purposeless regulation by which a sense of inferiority is imposed upon medical officers, is by the refusal to them of substantive rank. (m) It is impossible to imagine what serious justification can be offered for a system which, in respect of external
position, postpones service to inexperience, cunning to ignorance, age to youth ; a system which gives a subaltern who is hardly free from his drill practice precedence ferred on Attorneys. The following year he over his elder, who, perhaps has served through every a went to study sanitation in Paris, and wrote a campaign for thirty years; a system which treats member of a learned profession, a man of ability, skill and series of valuable reports on the subject, which experience, as inferior to a cornet of cavalry just enterproved of use to the English Commission. ing on the study of pay and audit regulations ; a system, In 1845, in conjunction with Dr. John Grant in fine, which thrusts down grey-headed veterans below of the Bengal Army, he wrote a biography of beardless boys." Dr. Robert Jackson, which they published with The concessions asked for have been, and are the third edition of that great Army Surgeon's on the Formation, Discipline and Economy of Armies. In this year, he made a strong representation on the injustice of not
classic work
conferring
similar to those
officers
officers,
honours and distinctions
and it
was
given
to
on
medical
combatant
greatly owing to his advocacy were made eligible for the It was chiefly owing to the
that medical officers Order of the Bath.
opinions and advice of Martin of the Indian Medical
and other members
Service, expressed
memoirs, that Lord Dalhousie
in able
influenced to
was
draw up an important State paper, from which the following paragraphs are selected :? "
There have already been found in the ranks (of the Indian Medical Service) many men of the highest capacity and value, who elsewhere would have won a And I will be answerable European reputation for it, that the Medical Service of the East India Company will be surpassed by none in the its Civil or Military branch."
Lord Dalhousie ities the following
urged upon points :?
world,
either in
the Home author-
"
(a) That the existing inequalities between the position of the medical officer and his brother officers, in respect of pension, honour and rank, shall cease. Such inequalities are founded 011 110 (b)
of
?
?
?
been,
grounds
?
justice, expediency or policy, or can
be
alleged regarding
no
valid
reason
has
ever
for maintaining them, (e) The a medical officer as a non-com-
absurdity of batant is, I believe, abandoned, (f) The medical officer fire like other men. comes constantly under Every the names of medical compaign which is fought exhibits officers in the list of killed and wounded, and the returns invariably show that they are still more often victims to their
own
ing comrades, (g)
exertions Proof
011
can
behalf of their sufferhardly be required of
being gradually and grudgingly granted, and each improvement has been followed by increased efficiency in the Medical Service. It
was
on
of Sir
account
that
the
representations College became recognized cine
and
Surgeons.
Surgery by In
1845,
he
Ranald Martin's
Calcutta as a
the was
Medical School of Medi-
Royal College elected
a
of
Fellow of
the
Royal Society. In 1857, he was put on the Royal Commission to inquire into the organization, government and direction of the Medical Department of Her Majesty's Army. In 1858, he
was
made the
pointed by the question
member of a Commission apCollege of Physicians to consider
a
of the Nomenclature of Diseases. he was appointed Physician In January of State for India in Council. to the Secretary 1859
In the same year, he became a member of a Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the
Army in India, which Commission continued till May, 1863. In 1860, Lord Herbert, as Secretary of State for War, recommended him for a K. C. B.; but, owing to some technical objection, a C. B. and had the honour of on him at the same time. conferred Knighthood President of the Medical made was he In 18G4, India the Office, a post that he occuBoard at at the close of 1874. death pied till his that others will follow Sir It is to be hoped
he
was
created
Joseph Fayrer's example and give interesting biographies of such
us
equally
well-known
members
of the
Hamilton,
O'Shaughnessy, Chevers, Goodeve, Vandyke Carter, Bryden and Maclean.
Dymock,
Indian Medical
Service
as
