against smallpox. In 1799, only one year after the publication of Jenner's historic treatise, Cutbush vaccinated all those aboard the frigate United States who had not had smallpox. In 1808, at the time of an outbreak of smallpox at the Marine barracks, Philadelphia, the doctor wrote to the Secretary of the Navy, "The natural smallpox has now appeared among the recruits; to arrest its progress, I have, vaccinated thirteen." The official order from the Navy Department, making smallpox vaccination compulsory, did not come until December 1, 1848.
Cutbush's extraordinary energy carried him on to write the first book on naval medicine by an American: a work whose sound common sense and practical suggestions on the subject of food, clothing, water, personal hygiene, disease prevention, recruiting, and the organization and administration of military hospitals have not been surpassed by any writers on the subject since his time. Dr. Usher Parsons, who was Commodore Perry's surgeon at the Battle of Lake Erie, was the only surgeon in the squadron able to attend the sick and take charge of the wounded. The other medical officers with the naval force were ill with what was called "lay fever" — probably malaria. Parsons tells us, "Having sole charge of the wounded of the whole Fleet, and the wounded being passed down to me for aid faster than I could attend to them in a proper manner, I aimed only to save life during the action by tying arteries or applying tourniquets to prevent fatal hemorrhage, and sometimes applying splints as a temporary support to shattered limbs, et cetera. In this state the patients remained until the following morning, under the free use of cordials and anodynes. At sunrise [the eleventh] I began amputations, and in the course of the whole day I visited the other vessels and brought all the wounded on board the Lawrence and treated them in like manner."
After 1820 Parsons resigned from the service and became a civilian physician in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a leader in the medical profession in that state and Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at Brown University. One of Dr. Parsons' greatest
