Civil Service. Alcock was then able to sail home to begin his medical training. He found Aberdeen University economical and entered Marischal College in October, 1881. In the first year he took the medal in Henry Alleyne Nicholson's class of Natural History. Even when "unqualified" he served as house surgeon in the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. In 1885 he graduated M.B., C.M., "with honourable distinction" and joined the Indian Medical Service. Alcock sailed to India in 1886 and served in the north-west frontier with Sikh regiment and Punjab regiments. In Baluchistan he dealt with his first case of a fatal snake bite from an Echis carinatus. In 1888 he became Surgeon-Naturalist to the Indian Marine Survey on the survey ship Investigator. Here he studied marine zoology and he published many papers along with the zoologist James Wood-Mason and others. He wrote about these years in A Naturalist in Indian Seas (1902) which is considered a classic in natural history travel. In 1892 Alcock resigned (having attained the rank of major) and became Deputy Sanitary Commissioner for Eastern Bengal. In 1893 Wood-Mason went home and Alcock agreed to act for him during his absence. Wood-Mason died on his way to England and Alcock was appointed as the superintendent of the Indian Museum. In 1895–96 he was on the Pamis Boundary Commission and wrote the Natural History results of this expedition. At the Indian Museum, Alcock worked on improving the public galleries of Reptiles, Fishes and Invertebrates. Sir George King, who was the chairman of the trustees, supported him; however, after his retirement, Alcock was given little support. Lord Curzon decided to exhibit the collections of the Indian Museum as a memorial to Queen Victoria in 1903 and Alcock was ordered to "vacate the gallery of Fishes at a moment's notice." Alcock protested to the trustees that "it would be disgraceful to dismantle a gallery of Invertebrates which included an exhibit of the recent mosquito-malaria discoveries, at a moment when those discoveries seemed at last to have driven into the thickest British skull the great truth that the study of zoology was of some use to mankind." The gallery was spared but the library was to be cleared. These experiences caused Alcock to quit and he returned home in 1906 writing to the Government "telling him what an impossible post the Superintendentship of the Museum was and begging him to get it improved