It is remarkable that, given the growing interest in the history of medicine, more attention has not been paid to the surgeons and assistant surgeons of the armed services. Their lives and works have the potential to teach us much about the complexities of nineteenth-century life, the relationship between the individual and empire and the growing desire to define oneself through education. The publication of Resurrecting Dr Moss: The Life and Letters of a Royal Navy Surgeon, Edward Layton Moss MD RN, 1837–1880 (2008), Nelson's Surgeon: William Beatty, Naval Medicine and the Battle of Trafalgar (2008) and now He Is No Loss: Robert McCormick and the Voyage of the HMS Beagle (2011) hopefully heralds an important turning point for these figures who combined medical work with scientific discovery. The HMS Beagle, one of the most iconic ships of all time, had, for a little over ten months, two naturalists: one would go down in history as arguably the world's most influential scientist and the other would slip away, virtually unknown. Charles Darwin and Robert McCormick were men of science, but McCormick was also a reluctant man of medicine. Steel's interesting study enhances what we already know about Darwin by positioning him alongside the humble surgeons who worked tirelessly to collect, catalogue and inform the growing field of natural history.

Steel paints a picture of a man who wanted more out of life than he was perhaps capable of achieving. The son of a naval surgeon, McCormick saw the Navy as a way to achieve a social position that was unavailable to him onshore, but his decision to enter as a surgeon was largely due to the fact that he had no money to command a more prestigious position. His career began in the West Indies treating yellow fever and, like so many surgeons before and after him, he soon contracted the disease he was meant to be treating. Steel describes a man frustrated as an ‘ordinary naval surgeon’ who sought fulfilment by combining his medical role with scientific discovery. Unfortunately, he was usually overshadowed, first by Darwin (there was no love lost between the two men) and then by an assistant surgeon named Dalton Hooker. McCormick was a man who lacked the ability to impress and make friends in high places; promotion was slow and distinctions were rare. When he died at Wimbledon in 1890, his only companions were a sparrow and a duck.

This is an extremely accessible book with three main chapters. The first is a biographical overview of McCormick, but Steel uses this as an opportunity to highlight the tensions that ordinary naval surgeons confronted; medics, scientists and naval officers – these men were expected to do it all. The second chapter focuses on McCormick's diary and puts the story of his time on the Beagle into order. In the process, Steel reveals much about how class and protocol were manifest in naval life and how the development of one's abilities was subject to station. In the third chapter she uses primary source material from both Darwin and McCormick to demonstrate how the scientific contributions made by regular naval surgeons like McCormick can be omitted, ignored or forgotten. The book also contains an appendix, comprising a transcription of McCormick's HMS Beagle diary between 9 July 1831 and 18 June 1832. This makes for interesting reading and is a useful tool for undergraduate teaching.

The personal journals of surgeons and assistant surgeons offer an honest glimpse of life behind the official records and Steel's study of Robert McCormick helps us to understand more about the relationship that these men had with scientific discovery. It is unfortunate that they have been so seriously overlooked by historians because they and their experiences have a lot to teach us, not just about scientific discovery, but also concerning the evolution of medical education, naval culture and the burning ambition of the middle class.