# American Medical Biographies/Hamlin, Augustus Choate

​Hamlin, Augustus Choate (1829–1905).
Augustus Choate Hamlin, nephew of Vice-President Hamlin, son of a famous Maine politician, Elijah J. Hamlin, and owing to these political affiliations obtaining many advantages through life, was born in Columbia, Maine, August 28, 1829. He was educated at a Maine academy and at Bowdoin in the class of 1851; medically at Harvard in the class of 1855. Immediately after graduation from the Harvard Medical School, he spent more than a year in Europe, chiefly in London and Vienna, and on his return, settled in Bangor, Maine, for medical practice until the opening of the Civil War. Previous to that time he had married Helen Cutting, daughter of Judge Jonas Cutting, of the Maine Supreme Court.
Early in April, 1861, he enlisted a company of infantry, equipped them with everything needed for war at his own expense, saw them put into a regiment and off for the war, and he himself went to the front as assistant surgeon of the Second Maine Infantry. He was promoted to the position of brigade surgeon in 1862 and medical inspector of the United States Army in 1863. His army medical experience was very large, as he attended the wounded on almost every extensive battlefield during the war and during a campaign in which he was the chief surgeon under Gen. Siegel, in northern Virginia. He personally organized his famous flying hospitals, the first of that sort then known.
Being honorably discharged in December, 1865, at the close of the war, having served the entire period, he resumed his former practice in Bangor, was a high official in the Grand Army, twice mayor of Bangor, and prominent in medical circles throughout the state. During his time of service as mayor a Russian man-o'-war spent the winter at Bar Harbor, and Dr. Hamlin devoted so much time to the medical care and comfort as well as the entertainment of the officers and crew that in recognition of the courtesy, the Emperor Alexander II. decorated him with the insignia of Chevalier of the Order of St. Anne. He was also commissioner of the centennial of the town of York, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the Philadelphia Academy of Science and fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquarians of Northern Europe. He was an expert in precious stones, and particularly of tourmalines, of which he made a unique and exceedingly beautiful collection, from his own mine on Mount Micalin, Oxford County, Maine. He also wrote a handsomely illustrated monograph on these beautiful gems.
Dr. Hamlin was a raconteur and writer, speaking often on military operations during the war and writing a history and defense of the Eleventh Corps at the bloody conflict of Chancellorsville, for which he was presented with a magnificent loving-cup, soon after its publication.
The death of a son, of a daughter and of a much beloved mother seriously affected his affectionate nature, and he finally succumbed to death, Saturday, November 6, 1905.
One of Dr. Hamlin's papers on "Transfusion of Blood" received high commendation when read before the Maine Medical Association in 1874. He was a man of unusual culture, gifted with a fine literary taste, fond of books, pronounced in his likes and dislikes, and had a large circle of friends.