Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/234

 stammered out, “I would have him examined by this board.”

But the greatest accession to the surgeons at this time was young Dr. Warren—“Jack Warren,” as he was commonly called—then only twenty-two. After his “Anatomical Society” days as an undergraduate, he had completed his professional studies with his brother Joseph, and had set up for himself at Salem. There he had already made a great name, especially for his almost intuitive powers of diagnosis. When Joseph was killed at Bunker Hill (and it is characteristic of the self-sacrifice which marks his profession that he was the only one of the local insurgent leaders who actually gave up his life for the cause), the younger brother, “in a frenzy of zeal,” rushed to Cambridge to volunteer for a place in the fighting line, but was persuaded, to his frequently expressed regret, to take a more appropriate post in the Medical Department. At Cambridge his technical skill and natural leadership, joined to his family prestige, procured for him “the honor to be next on the establishment” to Dr. Foster—and well would it have been if their positions had been reversed! But his youthful