Abstract
THE death on October 13 of Major-General Sir William Rice Edwards from pneumonia, after a very brief illness, at the comparatively early age of sixty-one, has come as a great shock to his many friends, and especially to the members of his service, who trusted and honoured him as their chief and loved him as an upright and sporting gentleman. He studied at the London Hospital, took the M.B. with honours and later the M.D. of Durham, and entered the Indian Medical Service in 1886, serving in his earlier years at the Eden Hospital, Calcutta, and on Lord Roberts's staff in India and later during the South African War, and was Residency Surgeon in Kashmir for some years before selection for the administrative grade. After a successful period as Surgeon-General, Bengal, where his abilities and accessibility endeared him to all who had the privilege of serving under him, he succeeded Sir Pardey Lukis in 1918 as Director-General at the most critical period in the history of the Indian Medical Service. He fought unflinchingly, without the least regard to his personal prospects, for the Service, first to obtain justice with regard to the increased pay recommended by the Public Services Commission, and afterwards to lessen, so far as possible, the disastrous effects of the Montague reform scheme. He succeeded in the first, with the help of the British Medical Association, but regretfully admitted, when speaking as chairman of the I.M.S. dinner only last June, that he had failed to a large extent in the latter superhuman task. He did much to foster the scientific work of the bacteriological department, while the successful organisation of the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine was due in no small degree to his invaluable support.
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Sir William Rice Edwards, K.C.B., K.C.I.E., C.M.G. Nature 112, 698 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/112698a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/112698a0