centers there. Returning to duty, he submitted a report on a nutritional research project of his own which won for him an American Medical Association prize in 1857. In the report on this study, in which Dr. Hammond had used himself as one of his "guinea pigs," he described himself as 6 feet 2 inches in height; from 215 to 230 pounds in weight; of a rather full habit of body; and disinclined to exercise for its own sake.
In the autumn of 1860, the future Surgeon General resigned from the Army to take the chair of anatomy and physiology at the medical school of the University of Maryland in Baltimore, but upon the outbreak of hostilities he had resigned his professorship and re-entered the Army, coming in as a lieutenant at the bottom of the promotion list, without credit for his 10 years of previous service.[1]
The Scientific Approach
The new Surgeon General faced a mountain of problems of medical supply and administration, but he saw beyond these to the basic questions of the practice of military medicine and surgery. Within less than a month after taking office, therefore, the new Surgeon General, seeking more complete and accurate knowledge of actual conditions, issued his Circular No. 2 on 21 May 1862 (fig. 2).
This circular prescribed in detail the requirements of the "remarks" which were to accompany the monthly Reports of Sick and Wounded. Full information was called for as to fractures, gunshot wounds, amputations, and exsections by the surgeons. On the medical side, information was sought not only as to symptoms and treatment of fevers, diarrhea and dysentery, scorbutic diseases, and respiratory diseases, but also as to shelter and sanitary conditions, and as to the character and cooking of the ration, rightly regarded as factors in the causation and severity of sickness.
Almost as an afterthought, the circular announced in its closing paragraph the intention to create a medical museum. "As it is proposed to establish in Washington, an Army Medical Museum," the circular read, "Medical officers are directed diligently to collect, and to forward to the office of the Surgeon General, all specimens of morbid anatomy, surgical or medical, which may be regarded as valuable; together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed, and such other matters as may prove of interest in the study of military medicine or surgery. These objects should be accompanied by short explanatory notes.713-028' — 64 3
- ↑ Drayton, Evelyn S.: William Alexander Hammond, 1828-1900; Founder of Army Medical Museum. The Military Surgeon 109: 559-565, October 1951.
