Description
Autograph Letter Signed ‘Robert Beith, to Jabez Hogg, the opthalmic surgeon and writer on the microscope arranging a delivery. A good one page example. 7 x 4 inches. Greenwich Hospital [watermark 1849]. Robert Beith was employed as Surgeon on the Eden to VDL and Port Phillip in 1849. The Eden departed Plymouth with 237 male convicts on 5 October 1848. She sailed via the Cape and Hobart where 35 prisoners were landed and arrived in Port Phillip on 4 February 1849 with 198 men. Dr. Beith entered her Majesty’s naval medical service in October, 1841, and served for some years in U.M.S. Dido, under that distinguished officer, Admiral Sir Henry Keppel, K.C.B., during the first war in China, and in the operations against the Malay pirates in the eastern seas. During a part of this period fever and dysentery prevailed at Amoy amongst the naval and military forces employed on that station. The whole of the medical officers attached to the troops were swept away by the fatal epidemic, and Dr. Beith was lauded and placed in sole medical charge of the 18th Royal Irish, and detachments of other regiments. His next appointment was to Greenwich Hospital, where he served until his promotion in 1852. Here he laid the foundation of his future fame and eminence by his assiduous culture of every branch of his profession, constantly attending not only at the large hospital to which he was attached, but also at the London hospitals, various medical societies, and other sources of professional knowledge. After a brief period of service in the Channel Fleet, as surgeon of the Vulture, he was selected, on the breaking out of the Russian war, by the late Sir William Burnett, Director General, as the first surgeon of H.M.S. Belleisle, then fitted out as the hospital ship of the Baltic fleet.