John Warren ( surgeon ) John Warren ( July 27 , 1753 – April 4 , 1815 ) was a Continental Army surgeon during the American Revolutionary War , founder of the Harvard Medical School and the younger brother of Joseph Warren . Early life . Warren was born in Roxbury , Massachusetts and studied at The Roxbury Latin School after which he proceeded to Harvard College where he graduated in 1771 . He studied medicine under his elder brother Joseph , later becoming a renowned doctor in Boston . Military activities . Warren joined Colonel Pickering ' s Regiment in 1773 as an army surgeon . On June 17 , 1775 , he was in Cambridge tending to the wounded coming in from the Battle of Bunker Hill on Breed ' s Hill over four miles away . Worried about his brother , who had joined the fighting and died , Warren went to search for him after the battle was over . A British sentry told John he could not pass and then bayoneted him as a warning , forcing the depressed Warren to go back to Cambridge . After his brother ' s death , Warren volunteered for service and was made a senior surgeon at the hospital in Cambridge . He became surgeon of the general hospital on Long Island in 1776 during General Washington ' s defense there . He also served at the Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Princeton . Warren returned to Boston in 1777 to continue his medical practices while still serving as a military surgeon in the army hospital there . Civilian practice . Warren became very successful in the years after the war , performing one of the first abdominal operations in America . In 1780 he began teaching a course on dissections and founded Harvard Medical School in 1782 . He was known as an excellent teacher , giving " eloquent " lectures . Later life . Warren suffered from heart disease for many years , but he died on April 4 , 1815 from inflammation of the lungs at age 61 . He was buried in the former crypt of the St . Paul ' s Church in Boston . When church and family crypts were cleared by order of the town for public health reasons , later in the 1800s , his buried remains were removed to Forest Hills cemetery . Plaques in the church still commemorate him , and other members of his family . Personal . Dr . Warren was raised in a Congregational home ; some members of his family , including his son John Collins Warren , later became associated with the Anglican church . He was given to bouts of depression , perhaps as a result of his heart disease , to the extent that he lost the will to live to an old age . He was said to be generous and charitable . Personally Warren was of middle height and carried himself with a military bearing of a gentleman , but with an agreeable nature . Warren was married to the daughter of Rhode Island Governor John Collins . His son , Dr John Collins Warren succeeded him as professor of surgery and anatomy . His brother , Joseph , was a character in Esther Forbes ' 1943 novel " Johnny Tremain " although it is possible that the character could easily have been based on John himself . Both he and his brother were army surgeons in the early revolutionary war . His brother was joined in the fighting at the Battle at Bunker Hill while he mended the wounded from the battle in Cambridge . Both Joseph and John Warren were active Freemasons . John served as Grand Master of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge ( Antients ) for two non - consecutive terms , 1783 – 84 and 1787 - 88 . He was reelected in 1788 , but declined the honor . John was present in 1792 when the Massachusetts Grand Lodge and St . John ' s Grand Lodge ( Moderns ) united to form the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts , and installed John Cutler as the first Grand Master of the united Grand Lodge . John Warren Lodge in Hopkinton is named after him .