Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A C.I.E. group of four awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel John Morison, Indian Medical Service, a prominent worker in the early days of bacteriophage research

The Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, C.I.E., Companion’s 3rd type neck badge, gold and enamels, complete with shortened neck cravat in its Garrard & Co. case of issue; British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaf (Maj. J. Morison); India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, Afghanistan N.W.F. 1919 (Maj. J. Morison. I.M.S.) the last three mounted for display, good very fine £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Awards to the Indian Army from the Collection of AM Shaw.

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C.I.E. London Gazette 1 January 1932: ‘Lieutenant-Colonel John Morison, M.B., Indian Medical Service, Director of King Edward VII Pasteur Institute and Medical Research Institute, Shillong, Assam.’

M.I.D. London Gazette 21 February 1919 (Mesopotamia).

John Morison was born on 6 November 1879, son of Donald Morison, M.D., a medical missionary in Bengal. He was educated at George Watson’s College in Edinburgh and at Glasgow University where he graduated with honours in 1901. After completing a series of house appointments he entered industry, but in 1906 was successful in the I.M.S. entrance examination. During study leave from service in the military department he obtained the D.P.H. in 1914. He was on active service throughout the first world war and was mentioned in despatches.

After the war he was appointed to the research department and held a series of laboratory appointments in various parts of India. While officiating as director of the Pasteur Institute of Rangoon in 1927, he was visited by Professor d’Herelle, who filled him with enthusiasm for research into bacteriophage, with the prospect of wiping out cholera and bacterial dysentery by treating both water supplies and patients. He started manufacture on a modest scale in Rangoon, but on his transfer to Assam as substantive director of the Institute in Shillong he let his enthusiasm have full rein and started manufacture and distribution on a large scale. In those early days, when the high degree of type specificity of bacteriophage was unknown and the electron microscope a thing of the future, he had the mortification of seeing his promised land of freedom from cholera and bacterial dysentery fade away, but he never abandoned his faith or lost his enthusiasm. In 1932 he was appointed C.I.E., and in 1934 he retired on account of age. In Edinburgh, where he lived until his death, he joined the laboratories of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, where he worked for a number of years, later transferring to the Usher Institute to work on epidemiology. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and died in that city on 21 February 1971.