Indian Medical Service

The Indian Medical Service (IMS) was a military medical service in British India, which also had some civilian functions. It served during the two World Wars, and remained in existence until the independence of India in 1947. Many of its officers, who were both British and Indian, served in civilian hospitals.

The Raj set up the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine between 1910 and its opening in 1921 as a postgraduate center for tropical medicine on the periphery of the Empire.

Among its notable ranks, the IMS had Sir Ronald Ross, a Nobel Prize winner, Sir Benjamin Franklin, later honorary physician to three British monarchs and Henry Vandyke Carter, best known for his illustrations in the anatomy textbook Gray's Anatomy.

The IMS was one of the routes to becoming a Political officer in the Indian Political Department.

The earliest positions for medical officers in the British East India Company (formed as the Association of Merchant Adventurers in 1599 and receiving royal charter on the last day of 1600) were as ship surgeons. The first three surgeons to have served were John Banester on the Leicester, Lewis Attmer on the Edward and Robert Myssenden on the Francis. The first Company fleet went out in 1600 with James Lancaster on the Red Dragon and three other ships each with two surgeons and a barber. This was the voyage on which the serendipitous experiment on lemon juice as a cure for scurvy was carried out. With the establishment of trading posts, "factories", around India, more surgeons and physicians found employment not only with Europeans but in the service of wealthy natives. These men of medicine included Nicholas Manucci, a Venetian born in 1639 who served Dara Shikoh before studying medicine in Lahore where he served Shah Alam from 1678-82. He then settling in Madras. An Armenian named Sikandar Beg served as surgeon to Suleiman Shikoh, son of Darah Shikoh, and there are records of several Dutch and French physicians in courts across India.

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