American Medical Biographies/Baxter, Jedediah Hyde
Baxter, Jedediah Hyde (1837–1890)
Born in Stafford County, Orange, Vermont, Jedediah Hyde Baxter, surgeon-general of the United States Army, received his education at the University of Vermont and graduated in medicine at the same institution in 1860. When the Civil War broke out he at once offered his service to his country and was commissioned surgeon in the Twelfth Massachusetts Volunteers June 26, 1861. Appointed brigade surgeon of volunteers in 1862, he was shortly afterwards put in charge of Campbell General Hospital at Washington and in 1863 was made chief medical officer of the Provost Marshal General's Bureau. In this position he compiled the "Medical Statistics of the Provost Marshal General's Bureau." This work, which includes a valuable anthropometic treatise, contains the results of examinations of more than a million men enrolled in the Union Army during the great war and was published in two large volumes in 1875. In 1867 Baxter was appointed medical purveyor with the rank of lieutenant colonel and promoted to chief medical purveyor with the rank of colonel in 1874. August 16, 1890, he was appointed surgeon-general of the army but his career was suddenly cut short four months later. He died of an attack of uremia December 7 of the same year.