Dr. H. M. Crake

IT is with the deepest regret that we have learnt of the recent death at Home of Dr. H. M. Crake, Health Officer to the Calcutta Corporation. " Like many other medical men, Dr. Crake knew that he was engaged in a war with conditions that he could not hope to see swept away in his lifetime" remarks the Statesman. " Religious and social forms were all the time fighting against his desire to bring light into the dark places of the city. His epitaph must be that he wore himself out in public service, content that at the end of the day a little progress should have been made." Dr. Crake came out to India first as one of the special officers appointed by the Secretary of State in 1898-1899 on the first outbreak of plague in Calcutta, his services being retained in that capacity until 1906, when he was appointed a District Health Officer. His work in connection with the sanitary survey of Burra Bazar and other congested areas of Calcutta City prepared data of very great value for the new thoroughfares and town-planning activities of the Calcutta Improvement Trust. In 1913 he was appointed Health Officer to the Calcutta Corporation and was re-appointed to the same post in 1923, and again in 1926. Much of his energy in Calcutta was devoted to the establishment and extension of maternity and prenatal welfare centres and schemes, and the infantile mortality in Calcutta was always the subject of his closest attention. In conjunction with the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine he took vigorous steps