A Brief Plea for an Ambulance System for the Army of the United States, as Drawn from the Extra Sufferings of the Late Lieut. Bowditch and a Wounded Comrade

From: collections.countway.harvard.edu

Dr. Henry I. Bowditch (1808-1892), delivered a baccalaureate address to Harvard Medical School graduates on March 11, 1863, and then revised and printed it following the death of his son, Nathaniel, in Virginia, adding an impassioned plea for an ambulance service to assist the wounded in the field.

That appendix, made all the more powerful by his personal grief, was then reprinted separately.
The first ambulance corps was organized in the Army of the Potomac in August, 1862, and in the following year a standard number of ambulances for each regiment was mandated.

Image: Henry Ingersoll Bowditch: A brief plea for an ambulance system for the army of the United States, as drawn from the extra sufferings of the late Lieut. Bowditch and a wounded comrade
(Boston : Ticknor and Fields, 1863). Gift of J. Collins Warren, M.D., to the Library of Harvard Medical School, 1916.

Posted in: Civil War Ambulances,Civil War Doctors