Henry Walter Bellew
Henry Walter Bellew MRCP (1834–1892) was an Indian-born British medical officer and author.
Life
He was born at Nusserabad in India on 30 August 1834. He was son of Captain Henry Walter Bellew of the Bengal army, assistant quartermaster-general attached to the Kabul army in the disastrous retreat of 1842. He was educated as a medical student at St. George's Hospital, London, and admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1855. He served in the Crimean War during the winter of 1854-5, and on 14 November 1855 he was gazetted assistant-surgeon in the Bengal medical service, becoming surgeon in 1867, and deputy surgeon-general in 1881. [1]
He was with the Bengal Army, assistant surgeon in the Bengal Medical Service, and went with Harry Burnett Lumsden on the 1857 mission to Afghanistan. He was in Mardan with the Corps of Guides in the 1860s,[2] and was then in Peshawar as a civil surgeon. He was appointed political officer at Kabul. He became Surgeon-General of India,[3] retiring in 1886.
In 1873-1874 Bellew participated in the Second Yarkand Mission led by Thomas Douglas Forsyth. The main goal of the expedition was to meet Yakub Beg, the ruler of Chinese Turkestan. He was accompanied on the mission by John Biddulph, Ferdinand Stoliczka, Thomas Edward Gordon, Henry Trotter, and R. A. Champman.[4][4][5]
He wrote a number of books on contemporary India and Afghanistan, including the first grammar in English of Pashto.[6][7]
He died at Farnham Royal, Buckinghamshire, on 26 July 1892, and his body was cremated at Brookwood.
Family
Bellew married Isabel, sister of General Sir George MacGregor; they had two daughters and one son, Robert Walter Dillon, a captain in the 16th Lancers.[1]
Works
- A Grammar of the Pooshtoo Language (1854)(Simon Wallenberg Press)
- Journal of a Political Mission to Afghanistan in 1857 (1862)
- A General Report on the Yusufzais (1864)
- The history of Káshgharia (1875)
- Kashmir and Kashghar: A Narrative of the Journey of the Embassy to Kashghar in 1873-74 (1875)
- Afghanistan and the Afghans : being a brief review of the history of the country and account of its people, with a special reference to the present crisis and war with the Amir Sher Ali Khan (1879)
- Races of Afghanistan (1880)
- An inquiry into the ethnography of Afghanistan: prepared and presented to the Ninth international congress of Orientalists (London, September, 1891). (1891)
- The History of Cholera in India from 1862 to 1881 (1885)
- A short practical treatise on the nature, causes, and treatment of cholera (1887)
- A Dictionary of the Pukkhto or Pushto Language, in which the words are traced to their sources in the Indian and Persian Languages (Simon wallenberg Press)Updated by Gayan Chand.
- An Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan (1891)
- From the Indus to the Tigris(Simon Wallenberg Press)
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Power 1901.
- ↑ Magnificent monastery -DAWN Magazine; 2 April 2006
- ↑ Khyber Gateway >> Pashto History >> Are Pathans Hindu Rajputs ?
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Thomas Edward Gordon. (1876) ‘’The roof of the world: being a narrative of a journey over the high plateau of Tibet to the Russian frontier and the Oxus sources on Pamir.’’ Edinburgh, Edmonston and Douglas. p. 171.
- ↑ 1917. ”The Amir Yakoub Khan and Eastern Turkestan in Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society. Vol. 4. No. 4. pp. 95-112.
- ↑ British Empire: Articles: Pashto Under the British Empire
- ↑ History of Pashto (PDF)
- Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Power, D'Arcy (1901). "Bellew, Henry Walter". In Sidney Lee. Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
References
- Concise Dictionary of National Biography
|