Hi all: Well, I took my own advice and googled for an answer. I found " m.b.c.m" indicates a British medical degree. So my Robert was a doctor, not a soldier as I had thought. Still do not know why he died so young. Elizabeth Goodfellow Engle I asked: In Abernethy, Perthshire, on a tombstone/monument of one of my Scottish families is the following inscription: "Robert Edie, m.b.c.m., who died 16th April 1894, aged 29." Has anyone any idea what the initials "m.b.c.m." stand for?