I. M. S. Promotion 30 Years Ago

agitation which followed the redaction of several administrative appointments in the I. M. S. in 1880, and the indignation caused among the senior officers by some of the promotions which followed thereon. The amalgamation of the military medical administration of the A. M. D. and of the I. M. S. in India, which had previously been carried on by a double set of officers, one from each service, however necessary in the interests of Government, bore very hardly on the senior executive officers, owing to the reduction in the number of administrative posts which necessarily followed. The I. M. S., as a whole, received a fairly adequate compensation in the grant of administrative rank, as Deputy Surgeon-General, to the Sanitary Commissioners of the five chief provinces, when they reached twenty-six years' service, which was then supposed to be the normal time at which promotion to administrative rank might be expected ; though even then, except in a few specially favoured cases, thirty years was more like the actual time. To the senior Brigade Surgeons, however, the fact that their juniors in the Sanitary Department were promoted over their heads, was small consolation for the loss of the promotion which they might reasonably have expected. The new system, indeed, only lasted for six years, and only one Sanitary Commissioner in each province got the benefit of it. The administrative rank bestowed on the Sanitary Commissioners was abolished in 1886, and the "extra compensation pensions" given to the Service instead ; a more equitable arrangement. By the grant of tliese pensions the compensation for loss of promotion went, in most cases, to the actual sufferers, and not to their fortunate juniors, who had already gained rather than lost by the change. The hardship inflicted on the senior Brigade Surgeons by the reduction in the number of administrative appointments, was enhanced by certain cases of selection for promotion which took place in the next few years. When Brigade-Surgeon W. Walker, Inspector-General of Jails in the N.-W. P. and Oudh, was