19

Schooling for the Medical Department II

“ Training, too, was needed to make an Army.” 1

A War Department Order of April 7, 1862, placed general hospitals under the Surgeon General’s direction, but the right of medical officers to command, within their 

own sphere, was not settled until publication of General Order No. 306, December 

27, 1864. By February 8, 1865, such control was extended to include hospital trains and 

hospital boats. The great temporary general hospitals of the Civil War period disappeared rapidly as the Army demobilized and by 1866 there were none.2

 The collection 

of professional reference books, begun in 1836 for The Surgeon General’s convenience, 

was increased through reassignment of surplus funds remaining from the deactivated 

general hospitals, and in the fifteen-year period following the war, the collection began to assume the proportions as well as the name of The Surgeon General’s Library.

The Army was concentrated at small stations in the West, South and Southwest, with 

the number of regular Army medical officers supplemented by contract surgeons. Newly 

appointed officers could anticipate at least two four-year assignments at such stations,3

where life was rugged and news of medical progress in the outside world was slow to 

arrive. Changes were occurring which would have a profound effect on the military 

medical service, but not even the best of dreamers could visualize the future.

Schooling for the

Medical Department

1860_1901
20

II Borden’s Dream

Three civilian training schools for nurses were opened in 1873, but no prophet seems 

to have noted as unusual the new trend toward orderly technical schooling for females. 

Medical education was destined for professional reform, and a few American doctors 

even then were interested in Lister’s controversial germ theory of disease. Isolated as they 

were, frontier Army doctors had little time or inclination to question the old ways, and so 

George M. Sternberg, an Army surgeon who began an independent study of disinfectants 

in 1878, was unusual.4 Such persistence required courage as well as foresight, for he was 

ridiculed by more functionary and less scholarly contemporaries.5 Nevertheless, by 1884, 

the year that the Congress authorized limited medical care for the civilian dependents 

of military personnel,6 and before disinfectants were in general use either in Europe or 

America, Army doctors were beginning to use antiseptic techniques in surgery.7

Able military medical assistants were needed in this new era of hospitalization, men 

with different training than that required of teamsters and packers, of cavalrymen and 

foot soldiers. On November 20, 1886, War Department General Order No. 86 authorized the instruction of corpsmen in first aid; the Act of March 1, 1887 (24 Stat. 435) 

established and permanently attached to the Medical Department of the Army, a Hospital 

Corps, whose uniform was still trimmed in the emerald green color used by the Civil War 

surgeons for the sashes of their full dress uniform. The United States, a procrastinator 

in ratifying the Geneva Treaty, had capitulated on March 1, 1882. By 1887 the Hospital 

Corpsmen were identified by a red cross mounted on a white arm band or brassard.8

Likewise of major interest to the future structure of the medical service, on January 17, 

1887, the Army and Navy General Hospital was opened in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with 

beds for sixteen officers and sixty-four enlisted men.9

Qualifying examinations had, since publication of the Medical Department Regulations of 1856, governed the promotion of corpsmen to acting hospital steward and 

steward, positions comparable to those held by non-commissioned officers of the line. 

War Department Order No. 56, August 11, 1887, promulgated rules and regulations. It 

would be many years, however, before the admission and departure of officers at general 

hospitals would be strictly controlled, for they continued, when they got chronic ailments, 

“to take a sick leave and wander off to be treated at their own expense, and often very 

poorly treated.”10 In fact prior to 1895, the sixteen-bed officer division received patients 

from October until June only.

By 1888, James E. Pilcher11 had written the first Medical Department technical manual 

and similar manuals issued for some years thereafter included a section on Hospital Corps 

drill. Thus the post-Civil War period not only engendered a new interest in the care of the 

wounded, but for the Army medical service it was a period of organizational consciousness 

during which one of the first requisites “was to make the position of the medical officer 

such that he would place some value upon the retention of his office....”12

Hostilities against the Indians continued until about 1890, with the medical field soldiers performing their duties so satisfactorily that a detachment, or Company of Instruction, was organized at Ft. Riley, Kansas, in 1891. The military-minded young Captain John 
21

Schooling for the Medical Department II

Van R. Hoff was in command. Although in common use, the name Hospital Corps was not 

authorized officially for some ten years.13 Securing satisfactory personnel for a stable and 

well-trained nursing service was an ever-present problem, as under the old system men 

detailed from the line received a higher rate of pay than those enlisting in the Medical 

Department. The Surgeon General was convinced that training the Hospital Corps was a 

major responsibility and that the organization must in “all particulars be a military one.” 

Thus by 1892, three Companies of Instruction were in training at western posts, each 

with tentage and field hospital furniture. New recruits received practical instruction in 

first aid, nursing, cooking, administration, drill and other related duties, and after being 

trained some of the men were reassigned to small hospitals at garrisons and posts.14 In 

spite of Congressional recognition, however, the medical soldier was destined to have 

difficulty in “winning his spurs”, for now and then uncooperative Quartermasters decreed 

that mules were the only available mounts, hardly a dignified means of transportation 

when accompanying the more militant and clanking cavalry and artillery.

Militarily the United States was divided into eight Departments or areas of command 

by 1894: Department of the East; The Platte; Dakota; Missouri; Texas; California; 

Arizona and Columbia. The Columbia Department included the historic Washington 

Arsenal, renamed Washington Barracks in 1861.15 Located at the confluence of the 

Po-tomac and Anacostia rivers and bounded on the east by James Creek Canal, the 

Barracks occupied some forty-four acres on Greenleaf’s Point, used as a fort since 1797. 

Shops had appeared in the neighborhood in 1807, and by 1812 the fort was an important 

storage place for powder. Destroyed by the British in 1813, it was rebuilt in 1815, but 

destined for varied military uses – in 1826 as a penitentiary and during the Civil War as 

an ordnance and supply depot for the Army of the Potomac.16

The location was attractive though not especially healthful, for the ground was low, 

actually at sea level. Tonsillitis and rheumatic conditions affected the troops in winter 

and in the summer the humid Washington heat made the area uncomfortable. As if 

heat and humidity were not enough, the troops likewise suffered from the presence of 

“malarial exhalations in this locality (which accounted) for the prevalence of the disease”. The James Creek Canal was still an open sewer in 1894, and the water was “foul 

smelling at all times”. The animate theory of disease was not generally accepted and 

so the Surgeon General believed that the troops were fortunate that the river “bank 

next to the post (was) lined with a double row of poplars and willows, forming a dense 

screen of foliage which (did) much to intercept malarious exhalations”.17 True there 

were other health problems, for Washington City was still the naughty place of General 

Hammond’s day, and in 1896 the Barracks “had a considerable excess of venereal cases 

and twice as much alcoholism as is ordinarily found at military posts,”18 but neither of 

these afflictions could be considered seasonal scourges. It required more than poplars 

and willows to curb the exuberance of soldiers.

Line officers were responsible for recruitments and assignments but many were careless in their selection of men detailed to the Medical Department as nurses. And so the 
22

II Borden’s Dream

Seventh Street Turnpike, about 1861
23

Schooling for the Medical Department II

Army Medical Museum & Library Building; First Home of Army Medical School 

doctors wasted valuable time training subordinates for semi-professional duties, only to 

have them reassigned at will. Moreover, assignments were not necessarily permanent, 

especially during war, as company (military) affairs frequently took precedence over care 

of the sick. The quality of enlisted personnel so assigned depended to a large extent on 

the tolerance or liking which company commanders bore their weaponless adjuncts, the 

doctors,19 some of whom were heretical enough to urge that the soldier-attendants be 

dishonorably discharged for drunkenness rather than merely discipline, for “a drunken 

nurse in one minute of error may cause injury that can never be remedied.”20

During this decade of apprenticeship, when the medical soldier was emerging as 

bonafide military personnel, his preceptor and sponsor, the medical officer, was being 

cultured by such men as Woodhull and Hoff.21 Their contemporaries, when forced by 

circumstances to take a more general interest in sanitary matters affecting the health 

of the troops, would find that versatility in Army matters gained for them respect from 

line commanders inclined to ignore their professional recommendations if costly,22 for 

many line commanders had the authoritarian’s honest resentment of recommendations 

made by the uninitiated. Moreover, some evaluated the military surgeon in terms of a 

proper “bedside manner” and a willingness to be addressed as “doctor.” Cured, or dead, 

they had no further use for him and seldom considered him a part of the Army.
24

II Borden’s Dream

Few of the grenadiers of that period agreed with the Surgeon General that “there 

are certain duties pertaining to the position of an Army Medical Officer more important than the clinical treatment of disease and injury.”23 But some young doctors took 

seriously the adapted inscription from an old sentry box in Gibraltar, which hung as a 

plaque in the office of many practicing physicians,

God and the doctor 24

All men adore

In time of trouble

And no more;

For when war is over

And all things righted

God is neglected —

The old doctor slighted.

Militarily, it was time to improve the doctors’ status. The only way to do it, according 

to Woodhull and Hoff, was to be both soldier and physician. It would require brilliant 

men to play such a role, for the prize would be large and the burden heavy.

The Army Medical School

While an organized field hospital service was acquiring a firm footing in training 

posts west of the Mississippi, Medical Department prestige was beginning a slow but 

sure climb in the East. The Army Medical Library and Museum were opened to “the 

medical profession at large, to scientific bodies and to professional students” by special 

act of Congress in 1892.25 George M. Sternberg was appointed Surgeon General in 

1893 and succeeded at last in establishing in Washington, the Army Medical School,26

housed in the Museum Building, located at 7th and B, Southwest, which had sheltered 

the Surgeon General’s27 Library since 1888. Three of the principal activities planned 

for Hammond’s quadrangular medical unit were now in existence; of the four, only the 

general hospital lacked authorization.

Three decades had passed since the proposal was made. Unless the Medical Department was willing to accept a secondary role in American medicine it was necessary to 

supplement the meager instruction in biological sciences, especially bacteriology and 

chemistry, then offered in the undergraduate medical schools.28 Thus the School was 

established to instruct approved candidates for admission to the Medical Corps of the 

Army in their ever-widening responsibility as Medical Officers and in the basic sciences. 

Army physicians in and near the District of Columbia, and others who had sufficient 

leaves of absence, could be admitted to the four-month course under the same regula-
25

Schooling for the Medical Department II

tions governing the regular students. Four professors would be assigned from among 

the senior officers in or near Washington, and as many associate professors as necessary 

to provide practical laboratory instruction in the methods of sanitary analysis, microscopical technique, clinical microscopy, bacteriology, urine analysis, etc.

While designed for graduate instruction, it was a school in fact as well as name, for 

in addition to giving a course of lectures in property responsibility, the examination of 

recruits, certificates of discharge with disability (CDD) reports, rights, privileges and 

Memorandum recording first faculty meeting of the Army Medical School, October 2, 1893, 

signed by Walter Reed
26

II Borden’s Dream

customs of the service etc., the President of the Faculty was responsible for discipline. Judging 

from the first class photographs, so sedate a group of young doctors could have had little 

time or inclination for pranks, for during the hours of class instruction they wore the stiff 

and uncomfortable uniform of their grade and in the laboratory, a black cambric gown.29 As 

usual in military procedure, when the faculty held its first meeting, October 2, 1893, the junior 

professor served as secretary and recorder. The junior professor was, at this time, a little 

known but diligent student of microbiology, Captain and Assistant Surgeon, USA, Walter 

Reed, curator of pathology at the Army Medical Museum. Some of his first Army Commanders believed he had little scientific ability, and in 1890, when he began post-graduate 

clinical study at the newly opened but already influential Johns Hopkins hospital, he was 

told to leave the laboratories alone. It was Surgeon General Sternberg, apparently, who urged 

him to follow his own specialty, an interest he pursued as a commuter from Washington, 

often accompanied by Hospital Steward James Carroll, whose “peculiar aptitude for this 

type of work gained for him admission to the regular University courses.”30

Like all faculties, the professors had a certain amount of school administration to 

contend with, and determining academic standing became an important issue when they 

gathered on the first Monday of the month to discuss academic problems. Captain Reed 

was obviously a congenital schoolmaster, for with the course hardly a month old he was 

the first professor to infringe on class time belonging to another. Serene and scholarly, he 

appropriated, apparently without apology, one hour of the time allotted to the Assistant 

Professor of Military Surgery and Instructor in Hospital Corps Drill.31

The students were undeniably members of a learned profession, and they seem to have 

had less aptitude, or perhaps less interest, in strictly military matters, for it took them 

until January 12, 1894 to become adapt at drilling a squad of litter bearers. The price of 

military proficiency had other drawbacks, for no matter what their progress on the ground, 

the budding young officers were at a disadvantage on a horse. As officers they could not 

indulge in the undignified comfort of mule-riding, and so early in the New Year 1894, the 

President of the Faculty learned that “five at least of the gentlemen still needed instruction” 

in equitation at the riding academy at Fort Myer, Virginia, where Saturday mornings were 

devoted to drill and riding.32

Military rank was fixed prior to attendance at the School, but the faculty believed this 

prevented competition and that the corps rank of new officers should be determined by 

the combined results of their school work and the findings of the Army Examining Board.33

Alas for professional promotion, for rank and precedence, had academic standing been 

influenced by a correct seat in the McClellan saddle! There were only five students in the 

first class, gentlemen obviously predisposed to the use of carriages, but their lack of 

interest in equine anatomy was characteristic of many of their successors. A half-century 

later to some of the earlier “schoolboys”:
27

Schooling for the Medical Department II

... Memory of the riding hall exercises (was) better than of more important subjects. 

Of the class of forty, six or seven had never been on a horse before. Some were afraid 

to jump ... and would collect on the side lines or find something wrong with their 

saddles. One, Collins, fell off his horse while he was standing still, and sprained his 

ankle. The ambulance was called, but as it was away, the soldiers loaded him in a 

trash cart and hauled him across the parade ground to the hospital.

George H.R. (High Ranking) Gosman was so short and his stomach was so large that 

he could not jump on the horse while it was standing still, much less while it was at 

a trot. His efforts were so amusing that the soldiers had great fun watching. He was 

good natured, and the more he laughed at himself the worse he got. On one occasion 

his fractious mount was misbehaving and H.R. dropped the reins. As he was unable 

to control the animal, he grabbed it around the neck and held on until the soldiers ran 

and caught him. At that point one of the bystanders suggested to the Doctor that he 

climb down the hind leg while the horse was standing still!34

First Graduating Class; Army Medical School, 1894. Assistant Surgeons: T.S. Bratton, A.S. Porter, 

W.W. Quinton (Sitting), D.C. Howard, W.H. Wilson
28

II Borden’s Dream

The curriculum for the first year was more or less arbitrarily established, but by the 

time the second session began, in the autumn of 1894, some of the younger professors 

were urging a broader program of instruction in pharmaceuticals, chemistry, involving 

the testing of drugs and determination of the specific gravity of urine, tests for sugar 

and albumin. Many of the new recruits for the Hospital Corps came from the eastern 

part of the United States, and so for convenience as well as economy a Company 

of Instruction was located at Washington Barracks during the year, with the men 

performing duties at the School and the recently built post hospital, where some 

received on-the-job training “in the preparation for” surgical operation. Some of the 

professors wanted to increase this training, but the President of the Faculty resisted, 

possibly because he thought the time wasted as the Department had a contract with 

Providence Hospital to care for “the support and treatment of ninety-five medical 

and surgical cases.”35 Captain Reed, supposedly shy and retiring with people, was 

on better terms with bacteria and stated his position firmly:

...Saying that in his department it would be of importance to give stewards and acting stewards, and the brighter members of the (Hospital) 

Corps instruction in the principles of antiseptics, and that it would 

be not only feasible but most important to instruct them practically in 

hand disinfection.36

The physical condition of American military camps was improving steadily during these 

years, and the awakening public health consciousness of medical officers was an effective 

instrument in reform. Basic humanitarian principles as well as good sense influenced some 

of the new measures, as the (diet) ration was improved, summer weight clothing was issued 

to men stationed in the south, bathing and latrine facilities were increased and decent 

mattresses and sheets were being issued in the garrisons. The Medical Department was 

making improvements within the hospitals, with the Surgeon General recommending that 

men assigned to nursing duties wear “white linen blouses and pantaloons.”37 The age of 

experimental medicine was dawning, and the professional care of the military ill was to be 

accomplished in a scientific manner, for in 1895 Post Surgeons were “directed to set aside 

in their hospitals a special room as an operating room....”38

Medical problems likewise received professional consideration during the autumn 

of 1895. The President of the Faculty was concerned for the mental health of the Army 

and believed that “instruction in lunacy (was) of importance to the student officers, 

especially as melancholia was so common a disease in the service.”39 As was characteristic of government agencies, even the “Bureau of Melancholia” was slow in cooperating, and while the budding young medical officers waited for Dr. Godding of the 

Government Hospital for the Insane, built in 1855,40 to deliver a series of lectures 

on lunacy, Dr. Robert Fletcher, distinguished scholar and then editor of the famous 
29

Schooling for the Medical Department II

Index — Catalogue, discussed elementary library techniques — the 

use of books and journals in the 

Library of the Surgeon General’s 

Office.41 It is worthy of note that 

whatever its other drawbacks and 

disabilities, the mental health of 

the Army as a whole failed to suffer 

markedly from the delay.

By 1896, three years after opening 

the School, the faculty decided that 

either the written or oral examinations could be used, with professional discretion. Captain Reed, whose 

scholarly lectures were salted with 

a certain amount of dry humor,42

attacked the problem with enthusiasm and announced heartlessly that 

“the examination in his Department 

would cover the morning hours of 

the present week together with two 

mornings in the next.”43

The incentive to excel, which the 

faculty believed deplorably lacking 

because rank was established prior 

to admittance, was coaxed by Lieutenant Colonel John Van R. Hoff, 

when the new session opened in 1897, for he offered to the best all-round man of the 

year a forty-dollar44 cash prize in honor of his medical-officer father. Early competition 

for the prize may not have been keen, or perhaps “the grind” was not as severe as the 

curriculum implied, for the students unanimously requested and were granted leave to 

attend the Army and Navy football game on November 26, 1897. However, with a real 

academic stimulus in view, the faculty determined to issue “Certificates of Proficiency” 

to students with average between 70-90, and “Proficiency With Honors” for grades of 

ninety and above.

A Prod to Scientific Awakening

The new-found interest in military medical training was interrupted by the SpanishAmerican War, the first war which found the Medical Department centrally organized, 

even if poorly equipped to perform its mission. There was no War Department general 

Hoff Memorial Prize Medal, 1897
30

II Borden’s Dream

staff to correlate and coordinate military problems and inter-departmental relationships 

were complicated. Adequate financial support for a non-combatant arm of the service 

was hard to secure; supplies were poor, scarce, and the transfer of supplies still poorer; 

the Quartermaster was entirely responsible for the ration, and proper diets for the sick 

were not readily available. As in the Civil War, some newly uniformed civilian doctors 

were not only professionally unprepared but, lacking military training, they objected 

to discipline. Few had even the minimal administrative experience and knowledge of 

sanitation then being taught medical officers, and since they were unfamiliar with the 

vast requirements of a mobilization, some criticized the Medical Department freely.

Once again the women decided to go to war, this time with more determination, more 

publicity for their cause and a more knowledgeable basis for the freely voiced criticisms 

of camp sanitation and hospital management. In the interval since the Civil War, Clara 

Barton had organized the American National Red Cross, not without challenge, to be 

sure, but it was a going concern. Women welfare workers now had a recognized outlet for 

their energies, and the government had a humanitarian ally. Of more importance, the ally 

was able to act with an enviable degree of freedom and independence.

For the second time in less than half a century a woman physician took the initiative 

in sponsoring trained nurses for the Army. However, Dr. Anita Newcomb McGee, a 

prominent Washington physician, had an advantage which Dr. Blackwell lacked — she 

and her father were personal friends of General Sternberg.45 Again in New York, the 

American National Red Cross Relief Committee formed a Women’s Committee, 

an auxiliary which formed, in turn, an extremely active and influential subcommittee known as Auxiliary No. 3, or the Red Cross Society for Maintenance of Trained 

Nurses. The Auxiliary’s two principal lay sponsors were Mrs. Whitelaw Reid and Mrs. 

Winthrop Cowdin, wealthy New York socialites, and its professional spokesmen included some of the most distinguished directors of nursing from New York hospitals. 

However, when both the national nursing organizations and the Auxiliary attempted to 

provide graduate nurses, they found the field controlled by the Hospital Corps of the 

Daughters of the American Revolution, with Dr. McGee installed as Superintendent 

of Nurses. There would be skirmishes among the skirtwearers as feminist challenged 

feminist, and until the nursing situation became acute, military commanders did not 

encourage the presence of female nurses in the camps.46

The Army was not alone in its conservative reaction to females, for in spite of the 

feminist movement then beginning to erupt in full force, the public had not endorsed 

wholeheartedly woman’s new found freedom. The national Army was a hodgepodge 

of state militia. The Medical “Corps entered the war as a corps in name only, in reality 

an aggregation of post surgeons.”47 Its sentiments were the sentiments of the nation. 

Men familiar with rough camp life were not only unwilling to subject women to its 

trials but they were unwilling to add to their own burdens and responsibilities until 

defeated by conditions beyond their own control. Although the women viewed the 

disastrous epidemic condition in terms of the functional care of patients, the reluctance 
31

Schooling for the Medical Department II

of some doctors to accepting them as military and professional colleagues encouraged 

some of the leaders in the nursing movement to believe the Medical Department was 

unwilling rather than unready to accept the distaff branch.48

The hospital-trained women nurses then under temporary contract to the government objected violently to the sanitary conditions of the camps; they criticized 

the care or lack of care offered by the hastily recruited corpsmen; they resented the 

supposition of soldier and officer that women could not adjust to camp life; the assumption of physicians and men nurses that they could not perform, within woman’s 

natural sphere — nursing — the duties of nurses without special favors for their sex; 

many of the more robust ones endured hardships rather than complain. Camp life was 

a new experience, one without preamble or guidepost. As was to be expected, some 

nurses commented without hesitation on supposed military inefficiencies. Challenged 

as women, challenged as nurses, they in turn challenged in behalf of women’s rights! 

Fortunately, the war was short-lived. The new crop of Army doctors, riven by their 

own undefined problem, the medical officer versus the strictly medical practitioner, 

wasted no time on a psychosomatic diagnosis of aroused womanhood. Such a consideration was, after all, beyond their abilities in an era when they had not solved more 

factual health problems. The majority of the doctors were warm in their praise of the 

nurses’ services, and such official encouragement instilled hope of a permanent place 

in the Army. The nurses were obedient aides, undemanding and anxious to be useful, 

for as the Surgeon General said “the systematically educated and trained nurse (was) 

developed by the medical profession....”49

Alcoholism and venereal disease were two of the principal health problems of 

the peacetime Army — reason enough, by nineteenth century standards, to protect 

American womanhood from the rigors of camp life. Prior to their replacement by 

contract nurses, eleven of the Red Cross — paid nurses were sent for relief work in 

the Philippines, shortly after the war. Both contract nurses and Red Cross nurses had 

served in Cuba and the United States, and one young nurse expressed the (post-war) 

situation graphically: “The sickness now among the men is dwindling down to just 

what the majority of the soldiers have, and just what, for that reason, the Army doctors 

say, a post hospital is no place for female nurses.”50 Nevertheless, a Congressional bill 

was already in the hopper to create a permanent Nurse Corps to replace the contract 

nurses appointed during the emergency. Corrected of some features objectionable to 

the Surgeon General, who earnestly desired to evade responsibility for its first defeat,51

it passed, in 1901, and Eve entered the Army to stay.

The Army Medical School closed early in the spring of 1898, before recommendations 

for extending the course from four to five months could be effected.52 Its students departed 

for “the front.” Walter Reed, by then a major, was still in Washington when camp pollution from typhoid fever reached the proportions of a national scandal. There were few 

recognized sanitarians either in or out of the Army, and laboratory diagnosis of typhoid 

fever by stool and blood examination was an unused technique. Recognition of human 
32

II Borden’s Dream

carriers of this disease was nearly a decade away. As one of the three physicians composing 

the Typhoid Fever Board appointed by the Surgeon General, Major Reed eventually made 

important recommendations on what then was thought to be the spread as well as the 

etiology of the disease.53 The monumental report prepared by this Board was a noteworthy 

scientific contribution both to public health and clinical medicine, and through his work 

Major Reed brought credit to the Army Medical School. For the Medical Department, 

much scientific work lay ahead; some of it would be more spectacular than any of its budding scientists had dreamed. Like twice told tales, the saga of military medicine during 

the otherwise gay nineties became a legend of heroic proportions. Although an advanced 

scholar for his day, even the Surgeon General was a baffled sanitarian. Cannily he qualified 

his observations and couched his comments on epidemics in vague terms: 

Given certain conditions as to the environment of soldiers recently enlisted 

and assembled in camps of instruction and the prevalence of typhoid fever 

may be predicted with certainty.54

References

1. Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington 1860–1865, Harper & Brothers, New York and London, 

ca 1941, pg 107.

2. P.M. Ashburn, A History of the Medical Department of the United States Army, Boston and New 

York, Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1929, pg 88.

3. Ltr from “JM”, Surgeon General, U.S. Army to S.F. Philipps, Senate Office Bldg. Washington, 

D.C., Jan. 10, 1890, SGO Folder 1430, War Records Div. Nat’l Archives.

4. Ashburn, op cit, pg 137.

5. Ashburn, op cit, pg 147, 148.

6. U.S. Statues at large, Chps. 217, 48th Congress, Sect. I, app. June 5, 1884; Act 5 July 1884 

(23 Stat. 112).

7. Annual Report TSG to TSW, 1885, pg 27, 28.

8. Ashburn, op cit, pg 425.

9. James Mathew Phalen, Chiefs of the Medical Department United States Army 1775_1940 (published 

by the Army Medical Bulletin) pg 60.

10. Biography of Gen. J.R. Kean, pg 96, Manuscript Copy, on file AML.

11. James E. Pilcher, the Transportation of the Disabled... by Human Bearers, Reprint from J. Mil. 

Serv. Ints. NY, 1888; Ibid, An Exercise in the Extemporization of Litters from Rifles and Gunslings

Rept. from Boston M & SG, 1888.

12. Phalen, op cit, pg 29.
33

Schooling for the Medical Department II

13. Phalen, op cit, pg 68.

14. Annual Report TSG... 1891_1892, pg 10-16.

15. General Order No. 40, May 12, 1881, changed name from Washington Arsenal to Washington 

Barracks, Telephone information provided by Miss Charlotte Greenwood, Ref. Lib., NWC, 

Dec. 6, 1950.

16. Charles J. Sullivan (comp) Army Posts and Towns... Burlington Free Press Printing, 1926, pg 

46; Arsenal in Old Days, Washington Post, July 14, 1901.

17. Annual Report TSG... 1893_1894, pg 58, 59.

18. Annual Report TSG... 1895_1896, pg 19.

19. Kean, loc-cit.

20. Annual Report, TSG... 1891_1892, pg 14.

21. Ashburn, op cit, pg 156.

22. Kean, op cit, pg 128; Interview, Major General Orlando Ward, Chf. Office of Military History, WDSS.

23. Annual Report TSG... 1893–1894, pg 15.

24. The word doctor substituted for soldier.

25. James C. Magee, TSG, Memorandum, Reference, Army Medical Library and Museum Bldg., 

April 27, 1940 (prep. By Love) 631.-1 SGO Judge Thompson’s file.

26. General Orders No. 51, Hdq. of the Army, AGO, Washington, June 24, 1893.

27. Information provided by Brig. Gen. Raymond Dart, M.C. (telephone) March 8, 1950.

28. Based on interviews with: J.R. Kean, B.G., M.C., Ret’d., Nov. 1946, Dec. 11, 1947, Apr. 17, 

1950; J.M. Phalen, Col., M.C., Ret’d., April 19, 1950; A.G. Love, B.G., M.C., Ret’d., April 5, 

1950; R.U. Patterson, M.G., M.C., Ret’d., Aug. 24, 29, 1950; A.E. Truby, B.G., M.C., Ret’d., 

Jun. 27-28, 1950.

29. Records of the Army Medical School, Oct. 2, 1893 – April 10, 1905, First to Ninth Session 

incl., original on file AMS, AMC.

30. Ibid. General Order No. 78 — Sept. 22, 1893, named faculty — Colonel Chas. H. Alden, Ass’t 

Surgeon General, Pres; Lt. Col. Wm. H. Forwood, Deputy Surgeon General (Mil. Surgery); 

Maj. Charles Smart, Surgeon, Mil. Med. & Director of the chem. laboratory; John S. Billings later took over Prof. of Mil. Hyg; Capt. Walter Reed, Asst. Surg. professor of clinical 

and sanitary microscopy and director of the pathological laboratory; Capt. John M. Cabell, 

Asst. Surg., Asst. Professor of military surgery and instructor in Hospital Corps drill; Dr. 

Hurd’s unpublished MS “First Quarter Century of the Johns Hopkins Hospital,” apparently 

extracted from notes on Welch’s pupils in folder “Welch as Scientist... Teacher and Speaker.” 

Collection of the Inst. of Hist. of Med., Welch Medical Library, Baltimore, Md.

31. Minutes... AMS, (on file Office of the Commandant), Nov. 6, 1893.
34

II Borden’s Dream

32. Minutes... Jan. 12, 1894, op cit.

33. Minutes... March 6, 1894, op cit.

34. Ltr from Col. Jas. D. Fife, M.C., Ret’d, to the writer, Jan. 11, 1951 (edited).

35. Annual Report TSG... 1895-1896, pg 10.

36. Minutes... AMS, October 15, 1894, op cit.

37. Annual Report TSG... 1893-1894, pg 15-19.

38. Annual Report TSG... 1895-1896, pg 7.

39. Minutes... AMS, October 30, 1895, op cit.

40. Act 3 March 1855 (10 Stat. 682) built for use of Army & Navy personnel of the U.S. and 

D.C.; name changed to St. Elizabeths Hospital by Act 1 July 1916 (39 Stat. 309).

41. Minutes... AMS, Nov. 7, 1895, op cit.

42. Interview with Maj. Gen. Robert U. Patterson, Aug. 24, 29, 1950.

43. Minutes... AMS, March 2, 1896, op cit.

44. Minutes... AMS, Dec. 6, 1897, op cit.

45. Florence A. Blanchfield, Organized Nursing and the Army in Three Wars, MSS on file Historical 

Division, SGO.

46. Ashburn, op cit, pg 175, 176.

47. Ashburn, op cit, pg 218.

48. Florence A. Blanchfield, Organized Nursing and the Army in Three Wars, MSS on file Historical 

Division, SGO; History of WAC organization in World War II (unpublished) MSS by Miss 

Mattie Treadwell, on file WDSS.

49. Annual Report TSG... 1899, pg 24.

50. Ltr from Lida G. Starr to Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Feb. 22, 1899, written en route to the 

Philippines. Files of Auxiliary No. 3, Archives, ANRC.

51. Ltr from George M. Sternberg, TSG to Mrs. Winthrop Cowdin, March 13, 1899, File, 

Auxiliary No. 3, Archives, ANRC.

52. Annual Report TSG... 1897_1898, pg 22.

53. Ashburn, op cit, 161-182.

54. George M. Sternberg, M.D., LLD., The Functions of the Army Medical School, American Medicine, Vol. III, No. 14, April 5, 1902, pg 547-551.