Lincoln Finds a Surgeon General: William A. Hammond and the Transformation of the Union Army Medical Bureau

LINCOLN FINDS A SURGEON GENERAL: WILLIAM A. HAMMOND AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE UNION ARMY MEDICAL BUREAU Frank R. Freemon William Alexander Hammond was a major contributor to the success of the Union in the Civil War. Between his political appointment as surgeon general of the United States Army in April 1862 and his dismissal by court-martial in August 1864, Dr. Hammond supervised the transformation of the "little, rickety, antiquated, incompetently led Army Medical Bureau" into a huge professional organization treating millions ofillnesses, amputatingthousands oflimbs, and evacuatingthousands of wounded soldiers into hundreds of newly built hospitals. This transformation of the Medical Bureau improved the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers, opposed the spread ofcontagious diseases, and aided Union victory.1 At the outbreak of the war, eighty-one-year-old Colonel Thomas Lawson directed the Medical Bureau of the United States Army. During peacetime, the Surgeon General's office had been able to supervise the hundred or so medical officers scattered across the continent by collation of their sick reports and by analysis of complaints from post commanders . This leisurely method of personal observation became impossible with the influx of new physicians of varying background. The Medical Bureau was unable to approve or even evaluate the medical officers of the state regiments. Although the new physicians held the rank ofsurgeon or assistant surgeon, many had never performed a surgiAn earlierversion ofthisessa)' was delivered to the59th annual meetingof the American Association for the History of Medicine, Rochester, New York, 1 May 1986. 1 Allan Nevins, Introduction to Lincoln's Fifth Wheel, by William Q. Maxwell (New York: Longmans Green, 1956), vi; Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1982). Civil War History, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, © 1987 by The Kent State University Press 6 CIVIL WAR HISTORY cal operation; some practiced such sect forms of medicine as homeopathy or botanic therapy. On 15 May 1861, old Colonel Lawson died at his home in Norfolk, Virginia. The next most senior medical officer, Colonel Clement A. Finley succeeded him. Finley's difficulty adapting to the exigencies of the war situation can be judged by his pride in reporting that for the fiscal year ending 30 June 1861 the Medical Bureau had spent less than it had been allocated.2 Just three weeks later, on 21 July, the first major clash of the war found the Medical Bureau, like the rest of the United States Army, unprepared. The defeat at Bull Run showed that an armed mob does not make an army. The disorganization of the Medical Bureau showed that a group of village practitioners, gathered together to help wounded soldiers, does not make a military medical organization. Some regimental hospitals were swamped with wounded troops while others remained idle, waiting for the wounded who never came because their regiments retreated without ever joining battle. Some wounded soldiers found themselves turned away from medical aid because they had made their way to the "wrong" regimental hospital. The ambulances that poured into Washington City with the retreating army held drivers, doctors, officers, soldiers, even civilians, but only rarely a wounded man. A leading medical journal laid the blame for this medical disaster squarely on the surgeon general: "The battle of Bull Run took place under the immediate inspection of the official head of the Medical Bureau; it was planned weeks beforehand, and admitted the most ample medical provision; yet the nation has not and never will cease to thrill with horror at the mention of its name and the recollections of the terrible sufferings."3 Surgeon General Finley received censure for high disease rates in training camps as well as for mishandling wounded troops. Responding to President Abraham Lincoln's call to arms, recruits gathered in training camps throughout the North. Infectious epidemics swept through these camps, especially those filled with rural recruits who had not previously experienced such common childhood viral disorders as measles. Though we now know that these epidemics were unavoidable, contemporaries blamed these devastating illnesses on unsanitary camp conditions that allegedly resulted from the improper actions of inexperienced regimental surgeons, poorly supervised by their superiors in...