Scientist of the Day - Humphry Sandwith
Humphry Sandwith, a British army surgeon, died May 16, 1881, at age 59. Sandwith trained as a surgeon in London and then, not finding a suitable position in England, went to Constantinople and lived there, even spending two years with Henry Layard when Layard discovered and excavated Nineveh. Eventually. Sandwith wound up in the service of Colonel (soon-to-be General) William Fenwick Williams, who was the British advisor to the Turkish Army, as England geared up for the Crimean War against the invading Russian Army. Sandwith was placed in charge of the field hospitals for the Turkish Army.
Sandwith is best known in military and medical circles for his role in the Siege of Kars, a city in eastern Turkey, when he was inside Kars and running the hospitals while city was first assaulted by the Russian army and then besieged. The Turks and the English held off the assaults, but they could not outlast the siege, and the starving city capitulated on Nov. 26, 1855. Sandwith had taken such good care of the wounded, both Turkish and Russian, that when the Russians hauled off most of the conquered English army (including General Williams) as prisoners of war, Sandwith was set free, because he had been so solicitous of the Russian wounded.
Sandwith returned to England and was widely feted for his bravery, but his career mostly wound down from there. However, in 1857, he was appointed Colonial Secretary to Mauritius, the island just off Africa, near Madagascar, in the Indian Ocean. One of his good friends back home was the anatomist Richard Owen (I have not discovered how the two became acquainted), and now that Owen had a connection in Mauritius, he asked Sandwith to send him some dodo remains (from Mauritius) and an aye-aye, a curious nocturnal primate that is native to Madagascar.