Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Civil War Surgeon, 1861- 1865 (review)

Among my many treasured books is Howard A. Kelly’s signed personal copy of John Brinton’s Personal Memoirs, first published in 1914. I admit, however, that when I purchased this book for $40 in 1985 (I would quarrel with John Simon’s statement in the new foreword [p. xiii] that the Memoirs has “become scarce and costly”), I read it with little more than cursory attention. As I have aged, one of my continuing small pleasures is the renewal, and occasionally the reassessment, of old acquaintances. I now realize that Brinton has given us a gem of an American surgical narrative, one that deserves wider recognition for its brutally honest portrayal of what Civil War medicine and surgery were all about.

Twenty-nine years old at the outbreak of the “War of the Rebellion,” Brinton writes that, “like the rest of the men of my age, I soon began to feel restless at home. I felt that I was not doing my full duty; that home was now no place for me” (p. 17). Determined to enter the Corps of Brigade Surgeons, unofficially known as “surgeons of volunteers,” he finished fourth in the entire country in the written entrance examination. Thus, Brinton was about to receive his first of many military orders.

What makes Brinton’s Memoirs so enjoyable is the volume’s easygoing readability. Brinton’s charm is that he makes you feel as though he is discussing his various military and medical predicaments with only you, his closest friend—a knack of literary ingenuousness that is not often noted in the writings of American surgeons. In so doing, he is not only believable, but quite frank in his varied opinions and observations: “I found St. Louis in a strange state. . . . The streets swarmed with soldiers . . . and the hotels were crowded with money-making people, not a few of whom were Jews” (p. 32). “Just at this period the craze spread among our good people that the women of the country could make themselves very useful by acting as nurses for the sick and wounded. . . . Can you fancy half a dozen or a dozen old hags, for that is what they were . . . surrounding a bewildered hospital surgeon, each one clamorous for her little wants?” (pp. 43–44). His incisive descriptions of various battles, the awful aftermath of treating the wounded, and the questionable quality of medical expertise found among American surgeons prove both realistic and informative.

One note of caution: Brinton was writing for an audience still somewhat familiar with the strategies and personalities of the Civil War. He provides numerous in-depth and first-hand comments on Ulysses Grant, Phillip Sheridan, and a host of other Northern military bigwigs. In order to fully appreciate these Memoirs, and to better understand Brinton’s assertions, I would suggest that any reader keep a reference volume on the Civil War close by.

In addition to various wartime stints, Brinton served as the first curator of the Army Medical Museum (now the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology). He went on to develop the plan and direction of the six-volume Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870–88), and he established a collection of war-related pathology that became the basis for a public medical museum. Following the cessation of hostilities, he returned to the private practice of medicine and surgery, and joined the surgical staffs of the Philadelphia Hospital and Jefferson Hospital. Brinton’s later years of active teaching and clinical writing established him as an eminent academic surgeon in the United States. His Civil War-based Personal Memoirs should be on the required reading list for all individuals interested in further understanding mid-nineteenth-century American medicine.