Royal Army Medical Corps
The Royal Army Medical Corps was a specialist corps in the British Army which provided medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace.
On 15 November 2024, the corps was amalgamated with the Royal Army Dental Corps and Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps to form the Royal Army Medical Service.
History
Origins
Medical services in the British armed services date from the formation of the Standing Regular Army after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Prior to this, from as early as the 13th century there are records of surgeons and physicians being appointed by the English army to attend in times of war; but this was the first time a career was provided for a Medical Officer, both in peacetime and in war. For much of the next two hundred years, army medical provision was mostly arranged on a regimental basis, with each battalion arranging its own hospital facilities and medical supplies. An element of oversight was provided by the appointment of three officials: a Surgeon-general, a Physician-general and an Apothecary-general.Army Medical Board
In 1793 an Army Medical Board was formed, which promoted a more centralised approach drawing on concurrent civilian healthcare practices. The Board set up five General Military Hospitals: four in the naval ports of Chatham, Deal, Plymouth and Gosport, and one in Chelsea. These hospitals received large numbers of sick and injured soldiers from the French Revolutionary Wars ; the Board, however, was criticised, for both high expenditure and poor management. By the end of the century the Board had been disestablished, and most of the General Hospitals were closed or repurposed not long afterwards. By 1807 the only General Hospitals in operation were York Hospital and the hospital at Parkhurst.Army Medical Department
In 1810 the offices of Surgeon-general and Physician-general were abolished and a new Army Medical Department was established, overseen by a board chaired by a Director-General of the Medical Department. James McGrigor served in this role from 1815 to 1851: McGrigor, who has been called the Father of Army Medicine, had served as principal medical officer under the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular War. During that time he had introduced significant changes in the organisation of the army's medical services, placing them on a far more formal footing: together with George Guthrie, he instituted the use of dedicated ambulance wagons to transport the wounded, and set up a series of temporary hospitals to aid the evacuation of wounded soldiers from the front line.After the end of the Peninsular War Fort Pitt in Chatham became the de facto headquarters of the Army Medical Department. A General Military Hospital was established on the site, which took on many of the functions of the old York Hospital. The influence of the Director-General grew, and from 1833 he was given sole charge of the department. That same year the Irish Medical Board was merged into the department, as was the Ordnance Medical Department twenty years later.
The Crimean War, however, would lay bare the inadequacies of the Army Medical Department. In 1854 there were only 163 surgeons on the Department's books; the Army had just two ambulance wagons, both of which were left behind in Bulgaria, and it relied for stretcher bearers on the Hospital Conveyance Corps. Two base hospitals were set up in Scutari, more than 300 miles from the front. Within weeks of arriving, more than half the British force had been incapacitated by disease ; and in the space of seven months some 10,000 British servicemen out of a total of 28,000 had died.
The Department after Crimea
In June 1855 a Medical Staff Corps was established. It was formed of nine companies, overseen by a single officer, and had its headquarters at Fort Pitt. The Medical Staff Corps was set up to provide orderlies and stretcher bearers. The officers known as purveyors, who were responsible for medical provisioning, were formed into a separate Purveyors' Department by a Royal Warrant of 1861; nine years later it was merged into the Control Department, and later became part of the Army Service Corps. In 1857, in response to the Crimean debacle, a Royal Commission had been appointed for the improvement of sanitary conditions in Army barracks and hospitals; it recommended the establishment of an Army Medical School, which was set up in 1860 at Fort Pitt Hospital before moving in 1863 to the new Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley outside Southampton.Netley functioned as a general hospital, but much of the army's medical work continued to be carried out at a regimental level. At the time a regiment of 1,044 men would have a medical staff of one surgeon and two assistants.
The regimental basis of appointment for MOs continued until 1873, when a coordinated army medical service was set up. To join, a doctor needed to be qualified, single, and aged at least 21, and then undergo a further examination in physiology, surgery, medicine, zoology, botany and physical geography including meteorology, and also to satisfy various other requirements ; the results were published in three classes by the Army Medical School. In 1884 the medical officers of the Army Medical Department were brought together with the quartermasters who provided their supplies to form the Army Medical Staff, which was given command of the Medical Staff Corps.
Nevertheless, there was much unhappiness in the Army Medical Service in the following years as medical officers did not have military rank but "advantages corresponding to relative military rank". They had inferior pay in India, excessive amounts of Indian and colonial service, and less recognition in honours and awards. They did not have their own identity as did the Army Service Corps, whose officers did have military rank. A number of complaints were published, and the British Medical Journal campaigned loudly. For over two years from 27 July 1887 there were no recruits to the Army Medical Department. A parliamentary committee reported in 1890, highlighting the doctors' injustices. There was no response from the Secretary of State for War. The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Physicians and others redoubled their protests. Eventually, by authority of a royal warrant dated 25 June 1898, officers and soldiers providing medical services were incorporated into a new body known as the Royal Army Medical Corps; its first Colonel-in-Chief was Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught.
The Corps in the 20th century
The RAMC began to develop during the Second Boer War of 1899–1902. Civilian doctors working in South Africa as volunteers—such as Sir Frederick Treves, Sir George Makins, Sir Howard Henry Tooth and Professor Alexander Ogston—who, having seen how unprepared to deal with epidemics the RAMC and the Army itself were, decided that a radical reform was needed. Chief among them was Alfred Fripp, who had been chosen by the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital Committee to order all the necessary materials and medical personnel, and oversee the setting-up of a private hospital at Deelfontein to cater, initially, for 520 'sick and wounded.' The contrast between the smooth working of the IYH at Deelfontein with the chaos of the RAMC hospitals, where an enteric epidemic had overwhelmed the staff, led to questions in Parliament, mainly by William Burdett-Coutts. In July 1901 the first meeting of the Committee of Reform took place, with all the aforementioned civilian experts, plus Sir Edwin Cooper Perry, making up half the number; the rest were Army men, and included Alfred Keogh, whom the new Secretary of State for War, St John Brodrick, later Earl of Midleton, appointed Chairman of this committee and the subsequent Advisory Committee. Neither would have met so soon—if at all—but for Fripp's concern to limit unnecessary suffering, and for his ten years' friendship with the new King, Edward VII. Fripp showed him his plans for reform and the King made sure that they were not shelved by his government. Part of his plan was to move the Netley Hospital and Medical School to a Thames-side site at Millbank, London. Cooper Perry, Fripp's colleague from Guy's Hospital, was instrumental in making this happen, as well as using his formidable talents as an organizer in other services for the Reform Committee. Fripp and Cooper Perry were knighted for their services to the RAMC Committee of Reform in 1903.During the First World War, the corps reached its apogee both in size and experience. The two people in charge of the RAMC in the Great War were Arthur Sloggett, the senior RAMC officer seconded to the IYH in Deelfontein who acquiesced in all Fripp's surprising innovations, and Alfred Keogh, whom Fripp recommended to Brodrick as an RAMC man well-regarded when Registrar of No.3 General Hospital in Cape Town. Its main base was for long the Queen Alexandra Military Hospital at Millbank, London. It set up a network of military general hospitals around the United Kingdom and established clinics and hospitals in countries where there were British troops. Major-General Sir William Macpherson of the RAMC wrote the official Medical History of the War.
Before the Second World War, RAMC recruits were required to be at least tall, and could enlist up to 30 years of age. They initially enlisted for seven years with the colours, and a further five years with the reserve, or three years and nine years. They trained for six months at the RAMC Depot, Queen Elizabeth Barracks, Church Crookham, before proceeding to specialist trade training. The RAMC Depot moved from Church Crookham to Keogh Barracks in Mytchett in 1964.