Born at Greenhithe, Kent, on April 27th, 1818. He was the son of Dr Forbes Macbean Chevers, RN, who was Surgeon on the *Phaeton* under Admiral Howe at his famous victory on June 1st, 1794, and on the *Tonnant* at Trafalgar. His mother was Anne, daughter of Lance Talman, of Newhouse, Kent. During his boyhood at Portsmouth his father was Flag Surgeon to the *Victory*. He was educated at St George's School, Haslar, and Guy's Hospital, finally at Glasgow, where he became MD at the age of 21. He next worked at pathology in London, and was one of the original members of the Pathological Society. He wrote on the structure of the heart and blood-vessels, on the "Causes of Death after Operation", which received a favourable notice from Sir James Simpson. His papers were published in the *Guy's Hospital Reports*. At Guy's Hospital there was then a remarkable galaxy of famous men on the staff - Astley Cooper, Hodgkin, Addison, Bright, Gull, and Hilton. For nine years Chevers continued his pathological work at Guy's Hospital as well as private practice at 22 Upper Stamford Street, on the site of a previous marsh - Maze Pond, Borough. He entered the East India Company's service on the Bengal side as Assistant Surgeon on August 1st, 1848, served for a few months with the troops at Dum Dum, and was Civil Surgeon at the stations of Parulia, Chittagong, and Howrah until 1855. He next acted as Secretary to the Medical Board of India during the Mutiny, and after two years was promoted Secretary to the Director-General of the Medical Department. For two years he was Inspector-General of Jails in Bengal; in April, 1862, he was appointed Principal of the Calcutta Medical College, Professor of Medicine, and Physician to the Hospital attached to the College, and was promoted Surgeon on September 18th. He was a member of the Senate of Calcutta University and was Hon Physician to Queen Victoria. Students enrolled whilst he was Principal rose in number from 409 to 1441 per annum; paying students in 1861 numbered 33, in 1873 1076. After serving as Examiner in Medicine he was, before his retirement, President of the Faculty of Medicine. As an authority on sanitation he was a member of committees concerned with the drainage and water-supply of Calcutta, and of an inquiry as to the identity of a man claimed to be Nana Sahib responsible for the massacre at Cawnpore. Chevers was promoted Surgeon Major on August 1st, 1868, retired on March 31st, 1876, with the rank of Deputy Surgeon General, and on May 24th, 1881, was made a CIE. He took part in the work of the Epidemiological Society and was President from 1883-1885. In 1884 he was appointed a member of the Special Cholera Commission; he lectured on "Health in India", and was President of the Sanitary Branch of the Social Science Congress at Birmingham. At his house, 32 Tavistock Road, Westbourne Park, he received and gave help to Indian students, and occupied himself with the *Commentary on the Diseases of India*, completed a few months before his death. He had shown symptoms of debility before his death, attributed to cardiac failure, on December 2nd, 1886; he was buried at Kensal Green. Chevers led a blameless and noble life, in which a commanding intellect and vast stores of learning were devoted to the advance of knowledge, the relief of suffering, and the welfare of his fellow-men, especially those of the great Indian Empire in which his lot had been cast, his best work done, and his well-merited reputation acquired. Publications: Besides his early pathological papers Chevers made a number of communications in India and wrote two books: *A Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India, including the Outline of a History of Crime against the Person in India*, 3rd ed, 1870. This originated in a Report on Medical Jurisprudence published in the *Indian Ann. of Med. Sci.* It is his chief work, a classical book of reference, including information on "Unfavourable Aspects of Indian Civilization". It was awarded the Swiney Prize - a silver cup of the value of £100 - and also the sum of £100 given by the Society of Arts and by the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1879 for the best work on medical jurisprudence published during the preceding ten years. On the other hand - *A Commentary on Diseases in India*, 1886, was written when the whole field of tropical disease was becoming revolutionized by advances in parasitology and bacteriology. In his old age he clung to bygone ideas: "As I have already intimated, I have lived and practised and shall probably die firm in the belief that intermittents and remittents are caused by a specific poison or morbific entity which emanates from certain soils" (p.162). On the enteric fever of Jenner: "but I cannot abandon the belief, founded upon the observations of a life-time, that there occur every year in Bengal thousands of cases of what I recognize, by its history and symptoms, as paludal remittent with or without bowel complications, more or less amenable to quinine; and that there also occur, only at intervals, small groups of isolated cases of that which also by its history and characteristics I perceive to be enteric fever" (p.186). The comma bacillus of cholera: "That the comma-shaped bacilli ordinarily found in cholera do not induce that disease in the lower animals, and that there are no grounds for assuming that they do so in man" (p.816). *A Brief Review of the Means of Preserving the Health of European Soldiers in India*, 8vo, 4 parts, 2 tables, Calcutta, 1858-1860. It contains an article, "Did James the First of England die from the effects of Poison or from Natural Causes?" - *Indian Ann. Med. Sci.*, 1862, xv, 187. *On the Preservation of the Health of Seamen, especially of those frequenting Calcutta and the other Indian Ports*, 8vo, Calcutta, 1864.