The Story of the I.M.S.
Surgeons Twoe and A Barber (1600-1947). By Donald McDonald. (Heinemann Medical Books, 42s.)
IF it be true, as our author tells us, that the history of the Indian Medical Service has been told "once and for all" by Dirom Grey Crawford, it is equally true that the story of the Indian Medical Service has now been written once and for all by Colonel Donald 'McDonald. And a fascinating story it is, whether read as a chapter in the history of our Empire, as a study in the progress of medicine, or as a series of biographies of men of vision and of action. When, in August, 1947, the Indian Medical Service ceased to be a service of the Crown, the Director General of the Army Medical Service, Sir Alexander Hood, declared that the debt which the India of today owes to the Indian Medical Service beggars calculation. We, here at home, said General Hood, have a vague knowledge that the Indian Medical Service produced some famous men, but what the Service did for India few even of our own British doctors realise. This book introduces us to Fayrer, Ross, Rogers, MeCarrison and number of others who have made history in preventive and in curative medicine, not only in India but in the world. In this way, the story goes far to justify the author's choice of Marshal Lyautey's maxim as his motto: "La Seule excuse de la colonisation c'est la Medecin." The portraits of these men and of their earlier and later colleagues are splendidly produced and the whole format h well up to the standard to which we are accustomed from the
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