'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.
