Portable medical kit carried by Captain Herbert Whyte, Medical Officer, 18th Battalion, Imperial Yeomanry, 1900 (c)

During the Boer War (1899-1902) Whyte is recorded as having attended to the wounded Lieutenant Lawrence Edward Grace Oates, who later died as a member of Scott's Antarctic Expedition (1910-1912). Oates, then serving with the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons, was wounded on patrol near Aberdeen in the Eastern Cape. Whyte and a volunteer search party located Oates, set his fractured leg without the aid of an anaesthetic, and then evacuated him to Aberdeen.