William Alexander Hammond

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Alexander Hammond
Hammond during his army tenure
Born	August 28, 1828 Annapolis, Maryland
Died	January 5, 1900 Washington, D.C.
Occupation	Physician
Spouse	Helen Nisbet (married 1849) Esther T. Chapin (married 1886)
Parents	Dr. John W. Hammond Sarah (Pinkney) Hammond

William Alexander Hammond, M.D. (August 28, 1828–January 5, 1900) was an American neurologist and the Surgeon General of the United States Army from April 28, 1862–August 18, 1864. In addition to his pioneering work in neurology and his service to the Army, especially during the Civil War, he also founded the National Museum of Health and Medicine,^[1] co-founded the American Neurological Association,^[2] and gave his name to Hammond's disease, a type of athetosis which Hammond was the first to describe in 1871.^[3]

1 Biography
- 1.1 Early life
- 1.2 Post-army
2 Selected works
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

William Hammond was born in Annapolis, Maryland, but moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania at the age of five and spent the remainder of his childhood there. He received an M.D. from the University of the City of New York at the age of twenty, and after an internship and a few months in a private practice, he became an assistant surgeon in the US Army in July 1849. His work in the army was primarily in the west; here Hammond notably served as the medical director of Fort Riley.^[4] In 1857, he won an American Medical Association Prize for his essay Experimental Research Relative to the Nutritive Value and Physiological Effects of Albumen Starch and Gum, when Singly and Exclusively Used as a Food, which Hammond had researched and compiled over the course of several years with the army.

On October 31, 1860, Hammond left the Army and accepted chairship of anatomy and physiology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore medical school. Here he taught and worked until the beginning of the Civil War. After working as a surgeon in the Baltimore Infirmary, Hammond rejoined the Army on May 28, 1861, a month and a half after the beginning of the war. Though he began in a position lower than that which he had previously held, he was soon promoted to be the inspector of camps and hospitals for General William Rosecrans, who was then stationed in West Virginia. The Sanitary Commission, which was dissatisfied with the current medical administration, as well as several other advocates including General George B. McClellan, eventually successfully lobbied to have William Hammond appointed as Surgeon General.^[5] After the incumbent Clement Finley was dismissed, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Hammond as Surgeon General with the rank of Brigadier General on April 25, 1862, less than one year after having rejoined the Army.

Hammond immediately began instigating reforms. For instance, entrance to the Medical Corps was reorganized and expectations for new recruits were increased. He founded the National Museum of Health and Medicine and Satterlee Hospital in 1862, and suggested many increases of the presence of medicine in Washington, including the establishment of a permanent hospital corps, a permanent general hospital, and a medical laboratory for the military. These recommendations were all manifested eventually, but at the time many of them led to dissent within the Army medical community. In the late summer of 1863, Hammond was ordered to leave Washington and instead oversee operations in New Orleans, Louisiana, while Joseph K. Barnes assumed the position of Surgeon General in Hammond's place. Hammond demanded that either he be returned to his office and Barnes be deposed, or else that Hammond be sent to trial by court-martial. The latter eventually took place, and in a questionable verdict, Hammond was found guilty of "irregularities" concerning the purchase of medical supplies and was relieved of duty on August 18, 1864.^[4]

[edit] Post-army

After leaving the Army, Hammond moved to New York City, where he began to focus more on neurology. He became professor of nervous and mental diseases at the Bellevue Medical College in 1867, and took on a professorship on the same subjects at the University of the City of New York in 1874, as well as occasionally teaching at the University of Vermont and the Post Graduate Medical School of New York. In December of 1874, Hammond founded the American Neurological Association (ANA) along with six others. Besides the ANA's journal Annals of Neurology, Hammond was also responsible for the creation or editorship of several other medical journals.

In 1878, Congress exonerated Hammond, and he was restored to the list of retired army personnel on August 27, 1879, though he remained without allowances or pay. In 1888, he moved back to Washington, D.C., where he founded a sanatorium. He spent the remainder of his life there and died on January 5, 1900 at his home due to heart problems. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where he lies in section 1, grave 465.^[6]

[edit] Selected works

(1857) Experimental Research Relative to the Nutritive Value and Physiological Effects of Albumen Starch and Gum, when Singly and Exclusively Used as a Food
(1863) Treatise on Hygiene, with Special Reference to the Military Service
(1866) On Wakefulness: With an Introductory Chapter on the Physiology of Sleep
(1869) Sleep and Its Derangements
(1871) Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism
(1871) Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System (much of this work was drawn from lectures given by Jean-Martin Charcot, and it was also the earliest American treatise about neurology^[5])
(1883) Insanity in its Medical Relations