Preserve your Love for Science
Life of William A Hammond, American Neurologist

A life of one of the most successful American physicians of the nineteenth century.

Bonnie Ellen Blustein (Author)

9780521392624, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 October 1991

304 pages
23.8 x 16.3 x 2.7 cm, 0.614 kg

"...a meticulously documented and highly readable biography that stands as the definitive study." Pascal James Imperato, New York State Journal of Medicine

William Alexander Hammond, M. D. (1828–1900), one of the most successful American physicians of the nineteenth century, was first recognized in the 1850s as a natural history collector and as an original investigator in physiological chemistry. Appointed surgeon general of the United States Army in 1862, he supervised a sweeping reorganization of the Medical Department along lines of centralization and efficiency. Some of his more controversial projects, however, provided Hammond's political enemies with the opportunity to engineer his court-martial and dismissal from the army in 1864. He then established himself in New York as an exclusive specialist in neurology, one of the first in the country. In this first full-length biography of a major nineteenth-century American medical personality, Bonnie Ellen Blustein shows how Hammond developed his specialty practice as a vehicle for pursuing broad scientific interests within the limits set by the solo-practitioner structure of the medicine of his day.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
2. 'I can make any post interesting'
3. 'The first original physiologist in the United States'
4. 'The best friend the soldier has'
5. 'Foggy with embarrassments'
6. 'A New York medical man'
7. 'A laborious and skilful observer'
8. 'So great her science'
9. 'Systems of cures and wonderful remedies'
10. 'A positive mental science'
11. 'All men are insane'
12. 'I said that I would be back'
13. 'Very near being a great man'
Notes
Note on sources
Bibliography of William Alexander Hammond, M. D.
Index.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX]