448 In Memoriam : Wm. Watson, M.D., /.M.S. [Sess. 



1856, when he was offered and accepted the post of Civil 

 Surgeon at Mynpoorie, in the North-West Provinces. There 

 he remained till 1857, when the Mutiny broke out, and 

 the young surgeon had to escape on horseback to the fort 

 at Agra, leaving all his belongings behind him. He con- 

 tinued on active duty throughout the war, until its close 

 at the end of the following year. In later years he seldom 

 spoke of his own doings during these trying times, though 

 now and then, in friendly conversation, he would recount 

 some of the hardships he had endured or the scenes he had 

 witnessed. On one occasion he distinguished himself in 

 an engagement at Agra by carrying a wounded European 

 soldier on his back to a place of safety. While thus engaged 

 he himself received a dangerous scalp wound, but he was so 

 oblivious of the hurt that it was not attended to until the 

 next day, when fever shortly set in, and he narrowly escaped 

 with his life. A younger brother, an officer in the Bengal 

 Native Infantry, was present at the siege of Lucknow, and 

 while attempting to get inside a breach made in the walls of 

 the Secunder Bagh or Alexander's Garden, he received a 

 heavy blow on the head from a tulwar. He recovered, how- 

 ever, and went home on furlough, returning to Calcutta, but 

 died shortly afterwards from the effects of sunstroke. 



When the Mutiny came to an end the East India Company 

 was abolished, the Crown taking over its various duties and 

 departments. Dr Watson, like many others, civil and 

 military, accepted office under the new master. He was then 

 appointed Superintendent of Vaccination, and subsequently 

 Acting Sanitary Commissioner, for the North-West Provinces. 

 In some of the papers read by him to this Society we get 

 glimpses here and there of his untiring energy and courage in 

 fighting cholera and plague, often single-handed. An echo 

 of these far-off days, curiously enough, lately reached our 

 member. Colonel Sconce, in the form of a letter to him from 

 Colonel Mallock, then a young Artillery officer at Agra, and 

 with whom at that time Dr Watson lived, being Assistant- 

 Surgeon to his Battery. The letter, which we are permitted 

 to quote, is dated 3rd March 1908, and contains the following 

 passage : " During 18561 was on leave in Mussourie. Cholera 

 broke out in the Battery [at Agra]. I was ordered down, and 



