Mr Alcock retired from military service in 1837 with the rank of Deputy-Inspector of Hospitals, having received the Order of the Tower and Sword together with the war medal of the three years' service in Portugal, and the Cross of the Order of Charles III. and Commander's Cross of Isabella the Catholic, with medals for the two principal actions against the Carlists. The six years of Peninsular experiences he declared to have been "the most stirring and attractive of his life," and in some portions of that period he had "more complete personal gratification and material happiness than could be safely anticipated in the future." He was now to have six years of quite a different experience, which led up to the turning-point in his life. III. ENGLAND, 1838-1844. Returns to England, 1838 -- Alcock resumes professional work -- Prize essays and publications -- Sir James Paget's testimonial -- A Commissioner for adjusting Peninsular claims -- Appointed Inspector of Anatomy, 1842 -- Imperfections of the Anatomy Act -- Marriage to Miss Bacon, 1841 -- His enforced abandonment of a surgical career. On his return to England in 1838 Alcock at once resumed the work of his profession. In that year he published in a small 8vo volume 'Notes on the Medical History and Statistics of the British Legion of Spain'; and in 1839, and again in 1841, he carried off the Jacksonian prizes of the Royal College of Surgeons awarded for the best essays on subjects selected by the Council. The first of these was "On Concussion or Commotion of the Brain"; the second, "On Injuries of the Thorax and Operations on its Parietes"; and naturally the value of the papers lay in the extent to which the author was able to draw on his own observation and experience of gunshot wounds during his seven years of Peninsular service. Of these contributions to medical literature Sir James Paget remarks that "they may make one regret that he was ever induced to give up the study of surgery. For they show an immense power of accurately observing and recording facts, and of testing his own and others' opinions by the help of all the knowledge of the facts possessed by others at that time.... I doubt whether in the first half of this century better essays on gunshot wounds of the head and of the thorax had been written." And the small volume dealing with hospital experiences in Spain has drawn from the same eminent authority the comment that "it tells in a most graphic and clear manner the difficulties which, sixty years ago, beset the practice of surgery and the care of troops during war. These difficulties may have been greater at that time in Spain than in any other country in Western Europe, and may be thought now impossible, but they may be read with great interest, and one cannot doubt that Sir Rutherford Alcock's true account of them helped to remedy them, ... contributed to the improvement of the medical department of the army in this country."