Veterinary Surgeon

• A Powerpoint presentation from the South Asia Archive & Library Group's webite by Christopher Gill called "Veterinary Material in the National Library of Scotland’s India Papers Collection - A previously neglected resource for historical research"

• William Moorcroft

• The following information is from the website BillBuxton.com (scroll the letter A)

Beyond Bokhara: The Life of William Moorcroft, Asian Explorer and Pioneer Veterinary Surgeon 1767-1825 by Garry Alder (1985). London: Century Publishing.

This is the only biography of William Moorcroft, one of the great early explorers of the region north west of India.He was a veterinarian who came to India in 1808 as Superintendent of East India Company's horses. He traveled widely, ostensibly in search of breeding stock, but this this was clearly more of a pretext than fact. He undertook a journey into western Tibet in 1812, across the Garhwal Himalaya to Lake Manasarowar, Mount Kailas region, the Rakas Tal, and Gartok. Moorcroft and Hearsey were the first Englishmen in the area.

His next major trip was to Bokhara. He left British territory in 1820, for a trip that would last until 1825. Due to civil unrest in Afghanistan, he decided to go via Ladakh and Chinese Turkistan. He waited in Leh for permission from Kashgar, during which time he traveled and explored the greater part of Ladakh, the Karakoram Pass, the head-waters of the Yarkand River, the Western Himalaya, the Karakoram and the NW Frontier. In 1824, after deciding that permission would never come , he decided to go via Afghanistan, regardless of the civil conflict there. Traveled through Kashmir and Punjab, over the Khyber Pass, across the Oxus, and got to Bokhara. He died during the return trip.

• India List post and thread
• Travels in the Himalayan provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab, in Ladakh and Kashmir, in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara from 1819 to 1825, by William Moorcroft, George Trebeck Volume 1, Volume 2 Google Books

• The Madras Veterinary Establishment was set up in 1810 and boys from the Military Male Asylum and the Charity School were to be trained in the veterinary art, with the eventual rank of farriers. Google Books. Refer Madras Military Male Orphan Asylum

• There is a British Library catalogue entry IOR/F/4/661/18358 Mar 1821 which appears to be in respect of Bengal: Appointment of J.T. Hodgson as Veterinary Surgeon to the Governor General's Body Guard - he is to select and train eight Assistant Apothecaries as Veterinary Surgeons for the Light Cavalry Regiments. Refer Apothecary - Duties