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Scanty Particulars: The life of Dr James Barry by Rachel Holmes, Viking, £14.99, ISBN 0670890995

JAMES BARRY seems to have appeared by magic in Edinburgh in 1810—which is fitting, given the newspaper scandal that followed his death in 1865. At any rate, no record of his early years has appeared.

Rachel Holmes, in her lively, witty and welcome biography, introduces him as a medical student at the University, a strange figure, short in stature, squeaky of voice and different from his rowdy contemporaries.

He qualified as a surgeon with distinction and joined the army. His first posting was to Cape Town, then a rough frontier settlement, and he quickly became a favourite of the governor Lord Somerset.

Barry’s candour and tenacity in combating both disease and bureaucracy brought him to the brink of ruin in South Africa. Further postings around the British Empire showed him as a tireless medical reformer, devoted to patients, even travelling to Scutari at his own expense to help Crimean War casualties—and clashing with Florence Nightingale.

Barry’s strangeness was later explained by assertions that he was really a woman. Rachel Holmes deals with this question at length, but evidence is conflicting. Possibly he was intersexual. However scandalous to the Victorians Barry’s secret might have been, considering his achievements as a doctor and surgeon it seems of small consequence.