Researching Civil War Physicians and Surgeons

By Dr. Michael Echols, American Civil War Surgical Antiques

One of the hardest tasks concerning Civil War research is to find out much of anything about the surgeons and physicians who served.  There is no centralized or organized data or repository of information about the surgeons on either side.  The records are most complete for the Union doctors and sketchy at best for the Confederate doctors.  The reason for the poor data of the Confederate doctors is because the records were burned at Richmond, Virgina at the end of the War and there were no duplicates.  Also, many of the surgeon's came via state militias as volunteers who were mustered into the regular army, so they may not be well documented under the Union Army data, but will be better covered under the given state militia information.

Your first resource for finding information on any doctor is to go directly to Google 'books' and dig for specific information on the doctor.  If that fails, then use the general Google search feature, but try variations on the name and then use of any titles such as Dr. or M.D. because they may not be listed in that manner.

The other problem in doing any research on the doctors is there were civilian contract physicians (see my eBay guide on contract physicians) and military surgeons.  Fortunately most, but certainly not all of the Union surgeons and assistant surgeons, are documented in the Roster of U.S. Army Regimental Surgeons and this document is accessible via Google Books.  Unfortunately there is nothing to compare with the Roster for Confederate surgeons.

Another good method to find surgeon data is to look in the American Medical Association's Directory of Deceased Physicians, which is a two part book or can be tracked down on one of the Geneaology web sites, just search on-line for for 'AMA deceased physicians'.  Not all physicians were members of the AMA, so many are missing from this database.

A huge resource for both Union and Confederate surgeons is the Medical and Surgical History of the War of Rebellion, which was published by the Union after the War.  It details exactly what procedures many surgeons performed during the War as well as communication containing their names and units.  Unless you can get your hands on the six volumes of this massive work, your best bet is to search on-line for digital access to the data..it is not easy to do.  The Medical and Surgical History is also available for purchase on a DVD from Galen Press on-line and well worth the price.  It's excellent.

Of course there are many, many other sources to find the pieces of the puzzle, but these resources are a good place to start.  Digging up anything on Civil War surgeon's is a matter of long, hard, research unless you are very lucky and trip over a concise biography on some place like Google books.

Dr. Echols is strictly a collector/researcher of Civil War surgical antiques and medical education of the surgeons who served in the War.  Extensive information is posted on Dr. Echols' web site at:

Ameican Civil War Surgical Antiques

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