The Indian Medical Gazette/Volume 39/January 1904/Doctors as Civil and Political Officers
Original Articles.
DOCTORS AS CIVIL AND POLITICAL OFFICERS.
By D. G. CRAWFORD,
Lieut. col., I.M.S.,
Civil Surgeon, Hughli.
When, after the final suppression of the Mutiny, the Government of India was transferred from the Company to the Crown, considerable changes took place in the various branches, military and civil, of the Company's Service. Among others, the fate of the Indian Medical Service was under consideration, and for long hung in the balance. For over four years, October 1860 to March 1865, no new commissions were given in the Service, pending a decision as to its fate, whether total abolition, amalgamation with the Army Medical Department, or a renewed lease of life. For some time the second appeared to be the most probable decision. Indeed, matters went so far that the Lancet of 27th June 1863, quoting from the Times of India, gives what were at that time supposed to be the terms on which amalgamation would take place. These terms, in brief, were that all officers of the Indian Medical Service were to be transferred to the Army Medical
Department, the new Infantry Regiments then being added to the British Army, were to be officered from those among them who volunteered for general service; those who did not so volunteer were to serve in India only, and were to retain a prior claim to Native Regiments and to civil appointments; all alike were to retain their claims on the funds, which would be guaranteed by Government; all were to be allowed the choice of Indian or British pension rules; a sufficient number of promotions from Assistant-
Surgeon to Surgeon to be made, to equalize the proportion of Surgeons to Assistant-Surgeons with that in the Army Medical Department; promotion to Surgeon-Major to be made at twenty years' service, without deduction of
periods spent on leave; pay to be consolidated, and headmoney abolished. Commenting on these terms, the Lancet remarks that the senior officers
of the I. M. S. will get little benefit from amalgamation, but the juniors will obtain a great acceleration of promotion However, all fears of
amalamation were put to rest by the issue of the new I. M. S. warrant of 7th November 1864.
It was during this period of deliberation between the assumption by the Crown of the Government of India and the issue of the new warrant of 1864, that the minute by Outram, from which the following paragraphs are extracted, was written. This minute is dated 2nd January 1860. Sir James Outram was then Military Member of Council in India, a post which he held from April 1858 to July 1860.
The preliminary education of medical men places them on a level, in respect of intellectual accomplishments, with the average of those with whom it is our good fortune to recruit our Cuvamanted Civil Service,—and above the average of our purely military officers; and their profession of (professional ?) education gives them qualifications for aiding in developing the resources of the country, and in ameliorating the condition of its inhabitants. They are necessarily acquainted, to a greater or less extent, with Geology, Botany, and other branches of Natural History. To their researches do we owe most, if not all, the economic discoveries in Natural History by which the East has of late years enriched the industrial resources of the world. And it is superfluous to indicate the many benefits which a knowledge of Natural History will enable a district officer to confer on the people of his district. As superfluous is it to dwell on the vast importance to the people of this country, amongst whom one overworked Civil Surgeon can rarely travel, that their District Officers should have that knowledge of the laws of health and of practical sanitary economics which is demanded of every candidate for a medical diploma. The knowledge of Medical Jurisprudence, possessed by every medical man, would be of incalculable value to district officers in the detection and prevention of crime, enabling them to arrive at definite and correct conclusions in very many cases wherein, from want of such knowledge, doubt must under existing arrangements necessarily exist in their minds, to the detriment of the interests of justice; and, as in the case of the doubtfully insane, to the danger of life and property, and the prolonged sufferings of the helpless. And, to conclude a series of illustrations which might easily multiply, I need but glance at the boon that would be afforded to the villages in the more remote parts of the country by the occasional passage amongst them of gentlemen competent to afford them medical aid,—to give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and ease to the suffering,—who, but for the advent amongst them (for magisterial and fiscal purposes) of 'a kind physician skilled their wounds to heal' might for ever seek relief in vain from the local native practitioner.
"Believing, as I do, that medical officers are admirably qualified for civil executive duties, and that their extensive employment in such duties would be advantageous to the material and social interests of the people, I am not less satisfied that it would tend to the elevation and improvement of the Medical Service itself. In the medical, as in all professions, there are 'round' men, whom a mistake on their own parts, or an ill-judged selection on the part of their parents and guardians, have thrust into 'square holes' men who, with, little natural taste or aptitude for the healing art, have high qualifications for the performance of other duties; and it is, I conceive, eminently desirable that men of this description should not only be permitted, hut invited, to transfer themselves from an uncongenial to a congenial sphere. Such a transposition is effected in England by the existing arrangements and demands of society; in India it can only be effected through the interposition of Government. And by encouraging it, the Indian Government would not only strengthen their civil establishment, but greatly add to the professional prestige of their medical corps. Would it have promoted the welfare of the sick, the political interests of England, or the reputation of the Indian Medical Service, had Sir John Macneill been compelled to remain in medical charge of a Zillah instead of representing his country in Persia; or had Dr. Lord been kept attached to a regiment of Native Infantry? Were the years during which Horace Hayman Wilson was condemned to feel pulses and to examine tongues (because he was an Assistant-Surgeon) considered as profitable to himself, his patients, or the world at large, as they would have been had his marvellous philological genius been provided with the full scope and free development that a professorship would have afforded? Did not the public voice of England ridicule and condemn the persistent confinement to professional duties of the accomplished brother of Sir Alexander Burnes, who, but for the real experience of our Service, might have achieved a name as great as that bequeathed by his illustrious relative? Not five years have elapsed since very cutting strictures were made in the medical periodicals on the regulations which compelled Lord Elphinstone—whose constant and anxious effort it is to put 'the right man in the right place'—to keep Liebig in charge of a native hospital, and the son of the ornithologist Gould,—a man hardly less versed in ornithology than his father,—in medical charge of a Government steamer, principally employed in conveying troops and commissariat stores between Bombay and Kurrachi.
"By admitting medical officers to civil and miscellaneous posts as freely as our military officers, no additional cost would be incurred, and no embarrassment would be occasioned to the operations of the Medical Department. For when it became known that through that Department the general service of the State could be entered, and that, by the elimination from its effective strength of officers having administrative tastes and aptitudes, departmental promotion was accelerated, we should not only find an abundance of candidates presenting themselves at the competitive examinations in London, but candidates of even a higher calibre than we now secure. For seldom as I look into medical periodicals, I am well aware that the gentlemen now in our Service do not send home encouraging reports of the manner in which we treat them, and at the recent competitions in London, but forty-three competitors appeared for upwards of fifty appointments. By opening to them the posts I have named, and treating them, in reference to promotion, in the same spirit of liberality as the medical officers of the Royal Army have been treated, we should make the Local Medical Service as popular and as highly esteemed as the Local Military Service."
The suggestions made in Outram's minute, as to the frequent employment of medical officers in an executive capacity, and their transfer from the Medical Department to other branches of the public service, will no doubt sound strange nowadays. For a quarter of a century past no medical officer has been serving as a regular member of any of the "Commissions" which, including military and uncovenanted officers as well as members of the Indian Civil Service, administer the Non-Regulation Provinces; and for the last five years there has been no medical officer in the ranks of the Political Department other than those employed on purely medical work. But five years and twenty-five years are short periods in the life of a service. It is, no doubt, improbable that medical officers will ever again serve in the Commissions; more especially as the general tendency of the time is to restrict such employment more and more to the Covenanted Civil Service. The Bengal Commission, indeed, has vanished altogether, and the places which, twenty years ago, were held by fully a dozen military and uncovenanted officers, are now all filled by the Indian Civil Service. The officers of the I. M. S. enter that Service for purely medical work, using the word medical in its wider sense, as including various branches of science. Cases in which an officer shows evident aptitude for work other than that for which he has been specially trained must always be rare, though from time to time they do occur. Military officers in India have attained the highest distinction in Civil Administration, notably Sir John Malcolm and Sir Henry Lawrence. Even stranger is the fact that a young civilian, of little account in his own service, should rapidly develop into the most brilliant soldier, the most successful general, of his time. Yet this is exactly what was done by Clive, a junior writer. The Indian Medical Service has never had in its ranks any officer who has attained to the fame of Malcolm or Lawrence, much less of Clive. Yet, on the whole, it is surprising how many of its members have been employed on work, executive, administrative, or political, foreign to their proper sphere of duty ; and how successful, on the whole, have been the officers so employed. Two indeed, Holwell and McNeill, attained to no small honour and success. To give a short account of the careers of some of the officers thus employed on extra-pnofessional work is our present purpose. Gabriel Boughton and William Hamilton did great service to and conferred great political benefits upon the Company and their country, but the charters granted by the Musalman rulers to these officers were earned by purely professional work. The first medical officer who attained eminence in a sphere other than professional was John Zephaniah Holwell, Member of Council and temporary Governor of Bengal. But, as the careers of these officers have already been sketched in previous papers,[1] it would be superfluous to detail them again now.
For half a century after the formation of the Service on 1st January 1764, no medical officer appears to have met with much success in an extra-professional career. In the first twenty years a good many assistant-surgeons drifted into the combatant ranks, but only one appears to have attained to any particular success in his new profession, and he was not of the first rank. Peter MacGregor Murray went out to India as an Assistant-Surgeon about 1773, but soon after obtained a combatant commission, and rose to be Adjutant-General of the Bengal Army, in which capacity he is said to have accumulated a fortune of £200,000.[2] He left India, on retirement from the Service, in 1803, and went home on the Indiaman Lord Nelson, which was taken off Ferrol, on 14th August 1803, by the French privateer Belloae. Colonel Murray was killed in the hand to-hand-fight which ensued when the privateer boarded the Indiaman. In the same fight fell another I. M. S. officer going home on furlough, Surgeon William Spottiswoode, brother of the Captain of the Lord Nelson. The Indiaman was retaken, eleven days later, on 25th August 1803, by the Colossus line of battleship.
The most successful of these soldier-surgeons was Francis Balfour, who entered the Bengal Army as Assistant-Surgeon on 3rd July 1769, was appointed Ensign eight days later, 11th July 1769, became Lieutenant on 26th June 1771, and on 10th August 1777 reverted to the Medical Department on receiving promotion to the rank of Surgeon. He was lucky in promotion throughout, becoming a member of the Medical Board on 20th December 1787, with only eighteen years' service, and holding that appointment for nearly twenty years, till he retired on 16th September 1807. He lived at least ten years longer. He was a voluminous author, his best-known work being "A Treatise on Sol-Lunar Influence in Fevers," which went through four editions (1784, 1795, 1815, 1816), and was translated into German in 1786. He was for some time Surgeon to Warren Hastings.
Charles Chaston Assey (entered the Service 19th September 1799) was for three years, 1814-1817, Chief Secretary to the Government of Java, while that island was in British possession. He died in Fort William on 2lst March 1821.
John Crawfurd (entered 24th May 1803), was one of the most successful of the I. M. S. officers who have adopted a political career. In 1808 he was posted to Penang, and in 1811 accompanied the expedition to Java, which resulted in the reduction of that island. For the next six years, 1811 to 1817, he was in political employment in Java. From 1817 to 1820 he was on furlough, and from 1820 to 1823 was at the head of an Embassy from the Company to the Courts of Siam and Cochin-China. In 1823 he succeeded Sir Stamford Raffles as Administrator of Singapur, and held that appointment till 1826, when he went on an embassy to the Court of Ava. He retired on 12th July 1827, when holding the post of Civil Commissioner, Pegu; and lived at home for over forty years, dying at his house in South Kensington on 11th May 1868. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 7th May 1818. Crawfurd wrote several books on the countries of Further India, which were for long the recognised authorities on the subject: "Histoiy of the Indian Archipelago," 3 vols., 1820; "Account of an Embassy to Siam and Cochin-China," 1828; "Journal of Embassy to the Court of Ava," 1829; "Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language," 1852; and "A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands," 1866.
John Leyden, the next name in chronological order, was one of the most talented men who ever came to India. Born at Denholm in Roxburgh on 8th September 1775, he was at Edinburgh University from 1790 to 1797. In May 1798 he was licensed as a preacher at St. Andrews, by the Church of Scotland, and presumably was the only clergyman who ever entered the Indian Medical Service, though a few men have been ordained after retirement. Not proving successful as a preacher, he turned his attention to literature, helping Sir Walter Scott with his "Border Minstrelsy," and editing "Scottish descriptive poems," and the "Scots Magazine" in 1802. In the same year he was offered an appointment as Assistant-Surgeon in the Madras Army, contingent on his getting a medical qualification, and succeeded in getting the degree of M. D. of St. Andrews University, as well as the diploma of L. R. C. S., Edinburgh, within six months, towards the end of 1802. He landed in Madras on 19th August 1803. The next three years he spent chiefly in travelling, in Mysore, Cochin, Malabar, and Penang. He was appointed Professor of Hindustani, in the College of Fort William, in 1806, Judge of the 24-Parganas about January 1807, and in January 1809 Commissioner of the Court of Requests, Calcutta. At the end of 1810 he was appointed Assay Master of the Calcutta Mint, but in 1811 went with the expedition for the reduction of Java, and died at Cornelis, Batavia, on 28th August 1811, of a fever contracted while examining oriental manuscripts in a damp ill-ventilated library. He died at the early age of 35, leaving a reputation as one of the most deeply versed oriental scholars who ever served in the country. In his day, also he had considerable reputation as a poet, though few have read "The Scenes of Infancy," in the present generation. One of his works "Journal of a Tour in the Highlands" was published so recently as 1903.
John Macneill, the next name on our list, was even better know it in his day than Crawfurd or Leyden, attaining to much greater worldly success than either of them; in some ways, indeed, greater success than any other man in the I. M. S., having been an Ambassador, G. C. B., and a Privy Councillor. No other I. M. S. officer has attained to either of the first two dignities; Joseph Hume is the only other man who has attained to the third. John Macneill was born at Colonsay on 12th August 1795, and he died at Edinburgh, where he took the degree of M. D. in 1814, at the age of 19, and entered the Bombay Army as Assistant-Surgeon on 6th September 1816. In 1818-19 he served in the field force under Colonel East in Cutch and Okamandal, afterwards becoming Deputy Medical Store-keeper. He became Surgeon on 1st May 1824, and from 1824 to 1835 was attached to the E. I. Company's Legation in Persia, first as medical officer, then as political assistant. On 30th June 1835 he was appointed Secretary to the special Embassy sent to Teheran, under Sir Henry Ellis, to congratulate Muhamad Shah on his accession to the Persian throne. At the same time the Persian Legation was handed over by the E. I. Company to the Foreign Office. The first class of the Persian order of the Lion and Sun was conferred on Macneill in 1835; on 9th February 1836 he was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Persia. In 1838 he was present in the Persian camp, at the siege of Herat, from 6th April to 7th June. In 1839 he was created a G. C. B. (civil), and left Persia for good on 15th August 1842. In 1845 he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Supervision of the working of the Scottish Poor Law Act of 1845 and held this post till 1878. In 1855 Sir John Macneill and Colonel Sir Alexander Murray Tulloch were sent to the Crimea as Special Commissioners to inquire into the working of the Commissariat. Macneill was elected F. R. S. on 5th April 1838, was made a Privy Councillor in 1857; he was also D. C. L, Oxford, and LL. D., Edinburgh. He died at Cannes on 17th May 1883.
John Stephens entered the Bengal Army as Assistant-Surgeon on 17th September 1806, and became Surgeon on 7th October 1818. He was serving as Assistant to the officer in charge of the then newly-ceded territories of Narbada and Sagar, when he was murdered in court, at Seoni, on 17th August 1827.
James Morton entered 16th March 1820, and became Surgeon on 7th May 1831. He served for many years in the Arakan Commission, and died at Kyukphyu on 24th June 1845, while holding the appointment of Senior Assistant Commissioner of Arakan.
Archibald Campbell entered the Service on 8th May 1827 and became Surgeon on 16th January 1844. He held the appointment of Superintendent of Darjiling from 1840 till his retirement on 8th Feburary 1862. When touring in Sikkim with Sir Joseph Hooker, they were seized by the Diwan of the Sikkim Raja, on 7th November 1849, and kept in confinement at Tumloong till 9th December. Campbell was subjected to considerable indignities and ill-treatment, but Hooker was not molested, and indeed would have been allowed to go, but refused to abandon Campbell. On 9th December they were allowed to start for Darjiling, under the Diwan's escort as far as the Rangit, and reached Darjiling on 24th December. As a result of this outrage, the Government of India annexed the Sikkim Tarai, and the hills up to the great Rangit River, and also stopped the annual subsidy of Rs. 3,000, formerly paid to the Sikkim Raja as rent for the site of Darjiling.
John Spencer Login entered the Bengal Medical Service on 5th March 1832, becoming Surgeon on 17th April 1848. He served in the First Afghan War, and was with D'Arcy Todd at Herat in 1839-40. He was then for some time Residency Surgeon at Lucknow, served in the Puiijab Campaign of l848-49,and on the annexation of the Punjab became Postmaster-General of the new province. Soon after he was appointed guardian and tutor to the Maharaja Dulip Sinh, the late King of the Punjab, and held that post from 1849 to 1858, when his ward came of age. He was knighted in November 1854; retired, after spending several years in England in charge of Dulip Sinh, on 15th April 1858, and died at Felixstowe on 18th October 1863.
Percival Barton Lord entered the Bombay Medical Service on 23rd November 1834. In 1836 he accompanied Captain, afterwards Sir Alexander Burnes on his commercial mission to Kabul, and visited Kunduz in 1837. When the Government of India determined to restore Shah Shuja to the throne of Kabul, in 1839, Lord was appointed one of the Political Assistants to Sir William Macnaughten, the Chief Political Officer. Lord came up to Kabul with the force from Peshawar, under Colonel Wade, in July 1839, and served as A.-D.-C. to Wade at the forcing of the Khyber Pass. He was then posted as Political Agent to Kunduz, in Afghan Turkestan, and passed the winter of 1839-40 in the caves of Bamian. He was killed on 2nd November 1840, at the battle of Parwandara, where Dost Mahomed defeated Shah Shuja's forces.
James Neil Dryburgh Login, a younger brother of Sir John Login entered the Bengal Service on 6th May 1842. He served in the Sutlej Campaign of 1845-46, after which he was appointed medical officer, and subsequently Political Assistant to the Resident in Nepal. While holding that post he died of cholera at Dinapore on 13th November 1849.
Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn entered the Madras Medical Service in 1842. He served in the Mysore Commission for some years, was on furlough from 1848 to 1851, and on his return became Professor of Botany and Materia Medica in the Madras Medical College. In 1855 he became Conservator of Forests in Madras, a post which he held till 1867, when he was appointed to officiate as Inspector-General of the Forest Department. He retired in 1869.
Charles Hathaway entered the Bengal Army on 10th August 1843, became Surgeon on 27th June 1857, and Surgeon-Major on 10th August 1863. He was for many years Civil Surgeon of Lahore, and subsequently Inspector-General of Gaols in the Punjab; but was best known as Private Secretary to Lord Lawrence, during his tenure of the office of Governor-General. He retired 14th February 1866. and is still alive, nearly forty years later.
Arthur Young entered the Bengal Service on 20th October 1853, becoming Surgeon on 4th October 1864. He served in the Oudh Commission till his retirement on 26th March 1872, and is still alive.
John Lindsay Stewart became Assistant-Surgeon, Bengal, on 4th August 1855, and Surgeon on 4th August 1867. He served in the Mutiny, being present at the siege of Delhi. In 1860-61 he officiated for Dr. Jameson as Superintendent of the Saharanpur Botanical Gardens, and in 1864 was appointed Conservator of Forests in the Punjab; a post which he held, with an interval on furlough in 1869-71, till his death, which took place at Dalhousie on 5th July 1873.
William Henry Hayes also entered on 4th August 1855, and became Surgeon on 4th August 1867, After twenty years' service in the Bengal Commission, chiefly in the Sinhbhum District, he retired on 16th April 1878, and is still alive.
Henry Walter Bellew, after serving in the Crimea, entered the Bengal Medical Service on 14th November 1855, and soon made a name for himself as an authority on the language, manners, and customs, of the Afghans, and as a traveller. During the Mutiny he was with the Lumsdens at Kandahar; in 1871 he accompanied Sir R. Pollock's Mission to Seistan, and in 1873 went with Sir Douglas Forsyth to Kashgar and Yarkand. He was made a C.S.I, in 1873. In 1879-80 he served in the Afghan War as Chief Political Officer at Kabul, but had to return home on account of ill health. The last appointment he held in India was that of Sanitary Commissioner of the Punjab. He retired on 14th November 1886, and died on 26th July 1892.
As we have now, in our survey, come down almost to the present day, a brief notice will suffice for those officers who have served, in political employ at a later date. J. P. Stratton, of the Bombay Medical Service, spent most of his service in the Political Department, and was for many years Resident at Jaipur. Sir Alfred Lethbridge, after nearly twenty years as Inspector-General of Jails, Bengal, became Superintendent of the Thagi and Dakaiti Department, from April 1892 till his retirement on 1st April 1898. Oliver Thomas Duke, after serving as medical officer to the Beluchistan Political Agency for some years, became a Political Agent in the same Province. Since his retirement on 22nd February 1887, he has thrice unsuccessfully contested South Bedfordshire in the Unionist interest. Sir George Robertson, the explorer of Kafiristan and defender of Chitral, retired so recently as 22nd October 1899, and in 1900 unsuccessfully contested Stirlingshire as a Radical.
A few lines may be devoted to mentioning some medical officers not in the I. M. S., who have won distinction during the last half century as diplomatists or administrators. Sir John Kirke was Consul-General at Zanzibar; Sir Rutherford Alcock was Consul-General in Japan from 1858 to 1862, and Minister Plenipotentiary at Pekin from 1865 to 1871. Sir Samuel Rowe, of the Army Medical Department, was Governor successively of the Gambia, of the West African Settlements, and of the Gold Coast and Lagos. Sir William MacGregor, first a Colonial Surgeon, subsequently Administrator of British New Guinea, Governor of Fiji, and Governor of Lagos. Leander Starr Jameson is best known as the leader of the famous raid on Johannesburg.
Last, but not least, we may allude to Leonard Wood, Assistant-Surgeon in the United States Army, who, in the late Spanish-American War, developed into a Brigadier-General, and subsequently became Governor-General of Cuba. An incident in his career goes to show that red tape may flourish as rigorously under the "Bird O' Freedom Soarin" of young America, as under the effete old British Lion. While Wood was Governor-General of Cuba some official discovered that he had never passed the examination for promotion from Assistant Surgeon to Surgeon, and gravely proposed that he should be recalled to the States for the purpose.