Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/508

HAMMOND upon two living subjects of the occlusion of the coronary arteries of the heart, afterwards verified and confirmed by the postmortem evidences. Nothing can take away from him the fact that he was an efficient and daring surgeon. He did what had been rarely done before; in two cases he had removed the entire upper extremity, including the scapula. Aside from these, he had performed successfully many plastic operations. He was a splendid pathologist, an untiring histologist and microscopist.

Dr. Hammer came to St. Louis in 1848; he had so deplored the outrages of his mother country upon her people that he became a revolutionist, and he was not the first to find out that those who give the first shock to a state are naturally the first to be overwhelmed in its revolution. Hence, he had to leave Germany, and came to St. Louis. He organized the Humboldt Medical College, and through untiring and earnest endeavor erected a college building, just opposite to the City Hospital on the corner of Soulard and Closey street. While he was absent in Europe the college was broken up. He became a professor in Missouri Medical College, and afterwards, broken down in health and ambition, he left St. Louis and returned to Europe, and died there August 4, 1878, about sixty years of age.

Dr. Hammer was clean and square in his dealings, free from any mixture of falsehood; he lacked discretion, but he had the hardy valor of an honorable and courageous man.

His ceaseless industry in acquiring the progressive elements of pathology, surgery and microscopy made him seemingly unceasingly contradictory to those quoting old and antiquated authorities upon these subjects. Hence, he was continually contradicting, and thus seemed to combat, while in reality he was aiming at the laudable purposes of substantiating progress and truth.



Hammond, William Alexander (1828–1900).

A surgeon-general of the United States Army and an able neurologist, he was the son of Dr. John W. Hammond of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, and was born at Annapolis, August 28, 1828, receiving his M. D. from the University of the City of New York in 1848, and after some hospital experience entering the United States Army as assistant surgeon in 1849. He served at various frontier stations in New Mexico, Kansas, Florida and at West Point, participating in numerous Indian cam- paigns and occupying his leisure time chiefly with physiological and botanical investigations. In 1857 he was awarded the American Medical Association prize for an exhaustive essay on "The Nutritive Value and Physiological Effects of Albumen, Starch and Gum When Singly and Exclusively Used as Foods."

In 1860 he resigned military service to accept the chair of anatomy and physiology in Maryland University and remained in active conduct of his department and in professional practice in Baltimore until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he resigned, appeared before the army medical examining board, and re-entered the service as assistant surgeon. On account of his previous experience he was at once assigned to administrative work in the organization of hospitals and sanitary stations, in which he was so successful as to attract the attention of the Sanitary Commission, which, being dissatisfied with the administration of the medical department of the army, successfully urged his appointment as surgeon-general. The work of the surgeon-general's office at once assumed an aspect of efficiency and force, but the promotion of Hammond over the heads of the assistant surgeon-general and the rest of the staff did not fail to create much antagonism upon the part of his confreres. More particularly his masterful and forceful administration so clashed with the autocratic spirit of Edmund M. Stanton, Secretary of War, that the result was a court-martial by which Hammond was dismissed from the service, a sentence shown later to be unjust and reversed by action of Congress, which, in 1878, provided for the appointment of Gen. Hammond with the full rank of brigadier-general previously held by him, upon the retired list.

During the period of his service as surgeon-general from April 28, 1862, to August 18, 1864, he accomplished many reforms in army medical administration. He inaugurated the "Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion," established the Army Medical Museum, introduced the pavilion system of hospital construction extensively throughout the service, and provided suitable habitation for the sick and wounded. The liberal issue of medical books and journals to the medical officers which has done so much towards maintaining the high standard of the department was due to him. Many other forms which later became realities were also recommended by him, such as the formation of a permanent hospital corps, the establishment of an army medical school, the location of a permanent general hospital at Washington and the