List of doctors and surgeons

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This article details some individual Doctors and Surgeons. For general information and research guidance, see the main Doctor article.

Individuals

A further list of surgeons, who found fame as botanists and naturalists can be found in that article.

Bengal

• Gabriel Broughton was, perhaps, the most influential doctor in the history of British India. In the year 1636 the daughter of Mughal Emperor, Shah Jehan, was badly burnt following the upset of an oil lamp. The Emperor sent for the English ship's surgeon, Gabriel Broughton, who was able to assist her. In a later incident he treated another lady of the Emperor's harem. In reward for his services he asked that the East India Company be given a charter to trade in Bengal.
• William Hamilton (Wikipedia), a surgeon, died 1717. In gratitude for the success of the medical treatment given to him by Hamilton, the Mughal Emperor, Furrukhsiyar, made generous gifts to the English surgeon. He also allowed the East India Company to purchase about 30 villages which enabled fortification of their position around Calcutta and greatly strengthened their trading presence in Bengal. Hamilton's profession, therefore, played a significant role in establishing the early influence of the East India Company. Photo of memorial to Surgeon William Hamilton on Fibis database
• The Diaries of Three Surgeons of Patna, 1763 edited by W K Firminger 1909. The diaries of William Anderson, Peter Campbell and William Fullarton (Fullerton) about the massacre at Patna in 1763. William Anderson died there. His diary is also published in the Calcutta Review, Volume 79 1884 which is available online on the Digital Library of India website, computer page 349.(Search for Calcutta Review, Vol 79). Refer Online books-Digital Library of India for more details about this site. William Fullerton was appointed Surgeon to the Calcutta General Hospital in 1744
• John Farquhar Assistant Surgeon c 1794 was “better known for the large fortune which he acquired from the various speculations into which he entered", brief details are in this link Archive.org
• William Lewis M’Gregor (or McGregor) 1801-1853. He gained his M.D. at Edinburgh 1825. He was appointed Assistant Surgeon 15 March 1826 and Surgeon 13 January 1842. He took part in the 1st Sikh War as surgeon of the 1st Bengal (European) Fusiliers, also known as the 1st European Light Infantry. He had also resided, for a time, at Lahore, as physician to Runjeet Singh, the Sikh leader (who died in 1839). M’Gregor wrote The History of the Sikhs Volume I and The History of the Sikhs containing an Account of the War between the Sikhs and the British in 1845-46 Volume II both published in 1846 Google Books. He describes how at the end of 1836 he performed galvanism, a type of electric shock therapy on the ailing Runjeet Singh, page 274 of Volume 1. Allen’s Indian Mail, page 673 reported M’Gregor’s death on 11 September 1853.
• Obituary of Surgeon Major Allan Webb, died 15 September 1863, age 55, entered the Bengal Medical Service in 1835. A second obituary. Obituary from the British Medical Journal. For many years from 1842, in addition to his other positions, he was surgeon to the Lower Orphan School, Calcutta, probably until his retirement, or close to it.
• Autobiography of an Indian Army Surgeon: Or, Leaves Turned Down from a Journal by Wilmington Walford M.D. (published 1854) Google Books.
• Frederic John Mouat 1816-1897, Bengal Surgeon, was a leading figure in the field of education and prison reform, ca 1840-1870 Wikipedia His Obituary was published in the British Medical Journal.

• Observations on the nosological arrangement of the Bengal medical returns by Frederic John Mouat Assistant Surgeon, Bengal Army, Professor of Materia Medica and Medical Jurisprudence in the Bengal Medical College 1845 Google Books
  
• Report on jails visited and inspected in Bengal, Behar and Arracan by Frederic John Mouat Inspector of Jails, Lower Provinces 1856 Google Books

• Obituary of Assistant-Surgeon W. J. Thomson, Civil Surgeon of Gurgaon (near Delhi), who died 1863. He had “an early death” and appears to have joined the Bengal Medical Service after 1858.
• Dr. William Brooke O'Shaughnessy (1809-1889), modernised treatment for cholera, introduced cannabis to Western medicine, laid first telegraph system in Asia.

• Memoir of Surgeon-Major Sir W. O'Shaughnessy Brooke...etc by M Adams (1889) Archive.org

• Captain J. R. Roberts, I. M. S., Agency Surgeon at Gilgit took many of the photographs in the book Making of a frontier: five years' experiences and adventures in Gilgit, Hunza, Nagar, Chitral & the eastern Hindu-Kush by Algernon Durand 1900 Archive.org, and is mentioned page xi of the Preface.

Madras

• Diseases of India by Sir James Annesley, 3rd edition. Google books. Commences with details of his career as a Military Surgeon in the Madras Presidency from 1800 until he retired in 1838, after five years on the Medical Board.
• Edward Green Balfour (Wikipedia) ,appointed assistant surgeon in the Madras Medical Service and sailed for India 1834. Retired 1876. Pages from History: Edward the green Balfour Madras Musings March 16-31 2010
• George Edward Aldred was appointed an Assistant Surgeon in the Madras Medical Service on the 20th of April 1847. This page from Asplin Military History shows the appointment procedures. He was court martialled for unbecoming conduct in July 1848 and dismissed, as this item from Allen’s Indian Mail 1848 shows, but subsequently reinstated.

Bombay

• Andrew Jukes from Encyclopedia Iranica. Appointed Assistant Surgeon 1798.
• Narrative of the Campaign of the Indus in Sind and Kaubool in 1838-9 by Richard Hartley Kennedy M.D. Chief of the Medical Staff of the Bombay Division of the Army of the Indus. 1840 Volume 1 Volume 2
• Henry Vandyke Carter 1831-1897 (Wikipedia) provided the drawings for the famous medical text book Gray’s Anatomy. He later joined the Bombay Medical Service where he had a distinguished research career and was Principal of the Grant Medical College Bombay.

• Obituary in the British Medical Journal dated 15 May 1897
• Details of his youth and final years in Scarborough
• “Happy Birthday, Gray’s Anatomy” by Adrian E Flatt. 2009. Contains some biographical details.
• Dr Vandyke Carter, Doctor from History of Leprosy, an initiative of the International Leprosy Association
• ”Causation Controversies in India: the Leprosy Career of Henry Vandyke Carter” Chapter 2, page 55 (online page 67) from Leprosy in the Bombay Presidency 1840-1897 Perceptions and Approaches to its Control . A PhD thesis in History by Shubhada S Pandya 2001
• List of Carter Papers in the Wellcome Institute, with a Biographical Note

• George Edward Seward, who joined the Bombay Medical Service in 1855, is the subject of this India List post. His service included that of Medical Officer and Cantonment Magistrate at Baroda, where he was instrumental in discovering poison in the cup given through the Gaekwar’s agents to Sir Robert Phayre, later giving evidence at the famous Baroda trial.
• Obituary of R Markham Carter 1875-1961 from the British Medical Journal. A large part of his career was in Bombay. He was renowned for the stand he took in respect of the appalling conditions suffered by casualties at Basra in Mesopotamia during the First World War.

Royal Army Medical Corps and the earlier British Army Medical Services

• Sir James McGrigor, later Director-General of the Army Medical Department, spent a short time in Bombay and Ceylon with the 88th Regiment of Foot from mid 1799 Chapter VI of his autobiography
• Andrew Leith Adams (Wikipedia) travelled to India in 1849 with the 64th Regiment of Foot and remained for seven years. Wanderings of a naturalist in India: the western Himalayas, and Cashmere by Andrew Leith Adams MD (1867) Google Books.
• “War in Burma-the Award of the Victoria Cross to Ferdinand Simeon Le Quesne" (pdf) by PH Starling from Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps March 2009. The award was for action in Burma 4 May 1889 when he was a Surgeon Captain with the 2nd Norfolk Regiment. He would have been part of the British Army Medical Services at this time, not the Indian Medical Service. He had later (broken) service in Burma and India until 1909.
• Field Force to Lhasa 1903-1904. Fifty letters home by Captain Cecil Mainprise of the Royal Army Medical Corps who took part in the Tibet Expedition. His obituary in the British Medical Journal 3 March 1951 indicates he had further service in India, including the 3rd Afghan War of 1919.

Other

• Theodore Ludvig Frederick Folly was a Danish surgeon who worked in the Danish colony of Tranquebar “The Medical Skills of the Malabar Doctors in Tranquebar, India, as Recorded by Surgeon T L F Folly, 1798” by Niklas Thode Jensen, PhD student Med Hist. 2005 October 1; 49(4): 489–515.
• Dr John Martin Honigberger 1795-1865 was physician to the court of Lahore from 1829 to 1849 and known to his Sikh contemporaries as Martin Sahib. The Sikh Encyclopedia Thirty-five years in the East: Adventures, discoveries, experiments, and historical sketches, relating to the Punjab and Cashmere; in connection with medicine, botany, pharmacy, etc. Together with an original materia medica; and a medical vocabulary, in four European and five Eastern languages by John Martin Honigberger, late Physician to the Court of Lahore 1852 Google Books
• John Williamson Palmer 1825-1906 was an American doctor, appointed, in Hong Kong, surgeon on the EIC war steamer Phlegethon (Bengal Marine). The previous surgeon, returning from a dinner party had slipped overboard and was drowned. The Phlegethon took part in the 2nd Burma War in 1852-1853 and The golden Dagon, or, Up and down the Irrawaddi: being passages of adventure in the Burman Empire by John Williamson Palmer 1856 Google Books details his experiences. He also wrote "The Chorus of the Palanquin Bearers", a description of his transit through Cossitollah Street, Calcutta. Biographical details
• Pennell of the Afghan frontier; the life of Theodore Leighton Pennell, M.D., B. SC., F.R.C.S. Kaisar-i-Hind medal for public service in India by Alice Maud Pennell 1914. Dr Pennell of the Bannu Medical Mission died at the age of 44.
• Laura and Charles Hope were Baptist medical missionaries from Australia, for most of the period 1893 to 1934, as described in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.