- James Ranald Martin
Sir James Ranald Martin (12 May 1796,
Isle of Skye -27 November 1874) [ Riddick, D. J. F. (2006) "The History of British India: A Chronology" Greenwood Publishing Group p 216 ISBN 0313322805] was a surgeon in the service of theHonourable East India Company and was instrumental in bringing out the effects ofdeforestation through his reports.Early life
Born in the
Isle of Skye in one of the oldest families living on the island, his father was Rev. Donald Martin and his mother was the daughter of Norman Macdonald and sister of Lieut-Gn. Sir John Macdonald. Martin was educated at St. George's and Windmill Street School. He became aC.C.S. in 1811 and entered theBengal Medical Service on 5 September 1817. He obtained commission of assistant-surgeon through the interest of his uncle, Sir John MacDonald. [http://books.google.com/books?id=_gsCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71 Biographical sketch in the London Lancet] ]Work
He left for
India in June 1817 aboard the "Lord Hungerford" toCalcutta and reported for duty immediately on arrival at Calcutta on 2nd December 1817.In 1818 he served in his Majesty's 17th and 59th Regiments forming the garrison of
Fort William . Here he came to see the effect ofCholera . He was then sent toOrissa where a malignant fever had prevailed and destroyed more than half the inhabitants ofGanjam . He saw action in a number of military engagements during the 1820s. The most notable of these was theFirst Burmese War from 1823–26. His war experiences, especially the fact that diseases affected thenatives and the Europeans differently, led him to believe that mapping of the medical features of the empire in much the same way astopography was critical for military and economic development. His notes on the medical topography ofCalcutta pioneered a genre of works that explored linkages between climate, public health and development. He was made the President of the East India Company's medical board in 1843. In 1856, he was substantially re-wrote and extended the then well-known treatise on diseases in the tropics, "Influence of Tropical Climates" originally authored by James Johnson. [Harrison, M. (1992) Tropical Medicine in Nineteenth-Century India "The British Journal for the History of Science" 25:3, p.302] He was also appointed as a member of the Sanitary Commission and contributed to the report of the Commission published in 1863.Smallpox vaccination started in India around 1803 but Martin was the first major advocate ofpreventive medicine in India. He proposed in 1835 that Company medical officers should collect statistics of places so that they could be collated for study. [Hume Jr., John Chandler (1986) Colonialism and Sanitary Medicine: The Development of Preventive Health Policy in the Punjab, 1860 to 1900. Modern Asian Studies. 20(4):703-724.] His pioneering report [Martin, R. (1836) "The sanitary conditions of Calcutta"] on the need forpublic health measures and the universal provision of clean water inCalcutta in 1836 called for a whole series of medico-topographical reports on India by the medical service. During the Burma War, a number of his colleagues in the Medical Department of the Bengal Army wrote topographies of Rakhine State, and in the following years other Company surgeons began to follow suit, producing detailed medical surveys of their town or district. TheMedical and Physical Society of Calcutta , of which Martin was a prominent member, and its counterparts in other presidencies, encouraged the publication of such reports in their transactions. Many of these reports [ Stebbing, E.P (1922)"The forests of India" vol. 1, pp. 72-81] spoke about the rapid rates of deforestation since the early 1820s. Such reports were instrumental in institutionalization of forest conservation activities inBritish India through the establishment of Forest Departments which later became theIndian Forest Service s.Notes
ources
* Grove, R. H. (1997) "Ecology, Climate and Empire" The White House Press, UK, pp. 237
* Sir Joseph Fayrer, Life of the Inspector General Sir James Ranald Martin (London, 1897) D.N.B., 12, pp. I 165-6.External links
* [http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=rf12v-EL0dkC&source=web The Influence of tropical climates on European constitutions (1856)]
* [http://www.aasianst.org/absts/1999abst/sasia/s-94.htm Mark Harrison - Knowing the country]
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