British Army surgeons commissioned 1840-1909 with west Indian/west African service: a prosopographical evaluation.

In the decade of the 1 840s the British Army Medical Department (AMD) commissioned 419 assistant surgeons to care for the health of its soldiers. Of this total 75 saw service in the West Indies or West Africa or both, some 18 per cent of those commissioned. For 67 of these officers the dates of their deaths are known. Seven died within less than one year of their commission date and another seven died before their second year of service had ended. More than 20 per cent were dead within two years of commissioning. Of the 61 for whom the place of death is recorded, 18 (almost 30 per cent) died in the West Indies and 13 (over 21 per cent) died in West Africa. The term "white man's grave" was regularly applied to the coast ofWest Africa during the 1 800s, but service in the West Indies was also dangerous for those assigned to regiments stationed there, especially to the West Indian regiments that, as of 1819, regularly served in West Africa as well. ' Almost 33 per cent of the 67 surgeons of the 1840s would be dead before the fifth anniversary of their commissioning. Nelson Lankford, in his detailed and stimulating study of the British army surgeon from 1860 to 1914, confirms the existence of "certain stereotypes doctors held about different stations. The West Indies and the west coast of Africa were the least healthy and least popular stations. The reputations of these colonies was [sic] long-standing, continuing throughout the century". He adds that "because the department commonly sent officers of proven mediocrity there, self-respecting surgeons did not wish to earn a similar reputation by association".2 How accurate were these stereotypes of the West Indies and West Africa? Did the AMD routinely order its average and poorer surgeons to serve troops stationed in these two regions, reasoning that their loss would be least harmful to the army?3 Fortunately, data exist that provide answers to these and related questions.