# Frank Hastings Hamilton

Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton was born on September 13, 1813 in Wilmington, Vermont and died August 11, 1886 in New York City, New York.

## Early life and education

At the age of 14 Frank Hastings Hamilton was accepted into the sophomore class of Union College where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1830.
After graduation he began his three-year medical apprenticeship under Dr. John G. Morgan, the physician at the New York State Prison of Auburn. Under Dr. Morgan's tutelage he studied anatomy and used his innate artistic talents to create oil paintings of nearly every part of the human body. He attended lectures at Fairfield and Western College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. He received his license to practice medicine in 1833 and received the degree of Medical Doctor from the University of Pennsylvania in 1835. Among the many positions of honor and trust which he held was the presidency of the New York Society of Medical Jurisprudence.

## Founder of University of Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine

Dr. Hamilton co-founded the medical department of the University of Buffalo in 1846 and is listed as a "Founder" on the university website along with Doctors James Platt White and Austin Flint I. He served as their first dean and taught surgery for 14 years. Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton tried the first successful skin graft at the University of Buffalo in 1854 at Sisters Hospital. On April 27, 1853 he gave an address to the graduates in medicine at the University of Buffalo. Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton, is memorialized on the University website as "a preeminent surgeon who introduced the use of ether as an anesthetic in the Niagara Frontier and who served as the school’s first dean and chair of surgery." His interest in the musculoskeletal system, along with his interest in trauma and fractures, qualify him as the “father of orthopedic surgery” at UB. The school has a club named after him called the Frank Hastings Hamilton Surgical Society. Hamilton Road, at the University of Buffalo campus, was named in honor of Frank Hastings Hamilton.

## Bellevue Hospital & Medical College

In 1861, the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, the first medical college in New York with connections to a hospital, was founded by Drs. Valentine Mott, Lewis Sayre, Frank Hamilton, and Stephen Smith. In the spring of 1861. After teaching in various colleges, in 1961 he became a Professor of Surgery, pioneer in orthopedics, military surgery, and military hygiene; at Bellevue Hospital Medical College along with the following esteemed physicians as the faculty: Frank Hastings Hamilton, Stephen Smith, James R. Wood, Alexander B. Mott, Lewis A. Sayre, Isaac E. Taylor, Fordyce Barker, George T. Elliot, Jr., Benjamin W. McCready, J.W. S. Gouley, Austin Flint, Austin Flint, Jr., and Robert O. Doremus. After returning from his service in the Civil War, was Professor of Surgery until he resigned in 1875. Among Frank Hastings Hamilton's noteworthy students was, Dr. Charles Leale, who the first medical professional to reach President Abraham Lincoln after he had been shot in the back of the head.

## Civil War military service (1861–1864)

At the beginning of the civil war he accompanied the 31st New York regiment to the front, and had charge of the general field hospital in Centreville during the First Battle of Bull Run. On July 26, 1861 Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton wrote a letter "special to the American Medical Times" about what he saw and did in the First Battle of Bull Run. In July, 1861, he was made brigade surgeon, and later medical director, and in 1862 organized the United States general hospital in Central park, New York. On February 11, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Frank H. Hamilton as “Medical Inspector with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the service of the United States.” This appointment was signed at the conclusion by President Lincoln, and countersigned by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, with Lorenzo Thomas signing above as adjutant general. Dr. Hamilton was given the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was appointed as the first Chair of Military Medicine in the United States.

## Published works

He served as consulting surgeon to various hospitals and asylums and became widely known as an authority on surgery, his three large works having a recognized place in the literature of medical science. They are:
* Treatise on Fractures and Dislocations (1860)
* Practical Treatise on Military Surgery (1861)
* The Principles and Practice of Surgery (1872)

## Terms

* Hamilton's bandage — a compound bandage for the lower jaw, composed of a leather string with straps of linen webbing.
* Hamilton's pseudophlegmon — a circumscribed swelling which may become red and indurated, but never suppurates.
* Hamilton's test — When the shoulder joint is luxated, a rule or straight rod applied to the humerus can be made to touch the outer condyle and the acromion at the same time.
       Dorland's Medical Dictionary (1938)

## Death and burial

Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton died on 11-Aug-1886 at 43 West 32nd Street, New York City, New York County, New York, at age 74; from Fibroid Phthisis-chronic pulmonary disease with hemorage. He was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. His obituary was published in The New England Journal of Medicine on August 26, 1886, in the British Medical Journal on August 28, 1886, Buffalo Medical and Surgical Journal on September 26, 1886, The American Practitioner and News, Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Atlanta Medical and Surgical Journal and New York Medical Journal.

## Family

Hamilton was the great-grandfather of Frank H. Davis, who served as Vermont State Treasurer from 1969 to 1975.
Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton was the son of Calvin Ulysses Hamilton and Lucinda (Hastings) Hamilton. Calvin Ulysses Hamilton was a farmer and owned a stagecoach line that ran across the Green Mountains between Bennington, Vermont and Brattleboro, Vermont.
Through his mother, Lucinda (Hastings) Hamilton, Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton is a descendant of Thomas Hastings who came from the East Anglia region of England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634.
Dr. Frank Hastings Hamilton & Mary Van Arsdale had a son, Colonel Theodore B. Hamilton (1836-1893). Colonel Theodore B. Hamilton married Helen Margaret Foote, daughter of esteemed diplomat and journalist Thomas Moses Foote, and descendant of Nathaniel Foote "The Settler", and Margaret St. John, circa 1872. Colonel Theodore B. Hamilton and Helen Margaret Foote had three children:
* Thomas F. Hamilton b. circa 12 Nov 1872, d. 16 Aug 1917
* Frank H. Hamilton b. 18 Oct 1874, d. 29 Dec 1906
* Helen Margaret Hamilton b. 14 Feb 1876, d. 1 May 1961