Ross the Medical Student, 1874–9

Abstract

By his own admission, Ross did not want to be a doctor. He says in his Memoirs that he wanted to be an artist and perhaps to some extent he had acquired his father’s interest in water-colour painting. Some of Ross’ own efforts have been preserved and show a certain promise and an appreciation of the ‘atmospheric’ effects that, in skilled hands, can be so appealing. Ross does not record the conversation, or conversations, that finally led to the decision that he should go to medical school. One can imagine that Colonel Ross at the age of 50 and with a professional life highly geared to ordering people about took a firm line in deciding how his eldest son was going to earn his living. By being trained as a doctor and then enlisted into the Indian Medical Service young Ross would have the prospects of an honourable career which combined some of the features of a learned profession and the military life of his father and other members of his family.