Henry Tristram Holland, the son of a Canon of the Church of England, was born in Durham in 1875. He was educated at Loretto School and at Edinburgh University from which he graduated MBChB in 1899. One year later he joined the staff of the Anglican Church Missionary Society at Quetta, Baluchistan and, having in 1907 obtained the Fellowship of the College, he was also in that year appointed medical superintendent of the hospital.
By then his surgical prowess, especially in the treatment of two common but disparate conditions -cataract and urinary calculi, had gained for him an impressive reputation extending widely over the northern parts of the Indian sub continent.
He began to concentrate increasingly on ophthalmic surgery but his hospital commitments made it necessary for him to maintain his wider skills and he remained a true general surgeon in the old fashioned sense of that term.
In 1911 an Indian philanthropist built for him a hospital at Shikarpur in Sind, on the condition that he spent six weeks there every year doing cataract surgery. The Shikarpur ophthalmology clinic established by Henry Holland was soon attracting patients from most of the northern provinces of British India and from regions even further afield such as Afghanistan and some of the central Asian provinces of the Russian Empire. Holland realised early on that poverty, geographical isolation and rudimentary or non-existent communications made it impossible for more than a tiny fraction of those in need of his skills to make the journey to Shikarpur. Accordingly, he and his surgical team travelled, often on horseback or on camels, to remote tribal areas where, usually under the most primitive conditions, they carried out successful cataract surgery on large numbers of patients. He was fluent in three of their indigenous languages and could maintain a simple conversation or take a medical history in four others. His respect and affectionate regard for the peoples of the wild, rugged and often lawless regions to which he brought his skills owed nothing whatsoever to colonial paternalism and everything to the Christian principles which guided him throughout his life.
During the First World War Holland served in the Indian Medical Service with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and during most of this period he acted as Chief Medical Officer for Baluchistan.
In the 1920s and early 1930s his workload increased steadily, and in response to this the Church Mission Hospital at Quetta was considerably enlarged only to be totally destroyed by the catastrophic earthquake of 1935. Holland, on duty at the hospital at the time of the disaster, was buried in the ruins, from which he was rescued by his own son. Thanks largely to his Herculean efforts, funds were raised for the building of a new hospital which, on completion, was amalgamated with the Church of England Zenana Hospital for women.
Between periods of duty at Quetta and at Shikarpur, Holland travelled to many remote and inaccessible places in various parts of the Indian sub continent where he and his team of assistants set up “eye camps”.
Each “eye camp” remained in its location for several weeks during which many hundreds of ophthalmic operations were carried out with incalculable benefit to impoverished rural populations for whom loss of vision was the worst of all personal disasters and there is no doubt that this work which he regarded as practical Christianity was, for him, the ultimate fulfilment of his life’s purpose.
Henry Holland retired officially in 1948 and settled in England but from time to time he accepted invitations to return to Quetta and Shikarpur and often substantial contributions to his travel expenses were made by tribal chiefs and other influential persons in the newly independent Republic of Pakistan. In his 85th year he ran an “eye camp” in Sind assisted by his two medical missionary sons, one of whom had become a Fellow of the College in 1948.
It has been estimated that teams led by Henry Holland restored sight to well over 150,000 patients of whom at least 10,000 underwent operation at his hands but throughout his life he considered this achievement to be of less importance than his work as a Christian preacher.
This in no way diminished the respect and affection in which he was held by his mostly Muslim patients who recognised in him a truly virtuous and benevolent man of faith.
His honours were supremely well deserved. He held the Kaiser-I-Hind silver and gold medals and in 1929 was made a Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE). He was knighted in 1936 and soon after retirement he was awarded the Lawrence of Arabia Medal. Two other honours which gave great satisfaction to his friends and former colleagues were the 1960 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service from the Philippines which he shared with his elder son and in 1961 the Sitara-I-Khidmat from Pakistan.
