Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/36

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16
ADVICE TO OFFICERS

diplomas are granted, and the course of study is acknowledged by our English schools to qualify for English degrees. The students of highest attainments, are styled sub-assistant surgeons, and are appointed to the numerous dispensaries established in most large cities, or to minor civil stations;during their course of study most of the students receive subsistence from Government, at the rate of five or more rupees a month. Their education costs them nothing, and their pay as sub-assistant surgeons runs from two to three hundred rupees a month.

All lectures are given in English, and the students exhibit a degree of zeal and application and even of proficiency highly creditable to them. Having officiated for a year as lecturer in clinical medicine in the College, I have had the best means of judging of native talent guided by European tuition. In the provincial dispensaries, I have seen them perform the capital operations of surgery with a degree of coolness,and self possession and dexterity worthy of all approbation. Several of the Calcutta students have highly distinguished themselves and taken high honours in our London schools, and one of their number lately passed a successful examination for a commission, and now is enrolled in the Bengal list of assistant surgeons— Dr. Chuckerbutty.

In all the principal cities of the Bengal Presi-