Drawing on History: A Civil War Cartoon

Hermann Faber: Medical Illustrator

By Tom Heintjes, 5-9-12

"Just as hammering one nail doesn’t make one a carpenter, so the old joke goes, neither does drawing one cartoon qualify one as a cartoonist. Hermann Faber without a doubt would not have considered himself a cartoonist, as he is now acknowledged as one of the founders of the medical-illustration profession. But the sole cartoon he produced, and later re-created, came during and as a result of American’s bloodiest period, the Civil War."
-Michael Rhode

In April 1862, Dr. William Hammond had been appointed the Union Army’s surgeon general after his predecessor, Dr. Thomas Lawson, resigned over differences with the autocratic Secretary of War Edwin M.  Stanton. Lawson had held the post since 1836, and his deputy, Dr. Clement Finley, filled in for less than a year before Hammond’s appointment. Neither man had remotely prepared the Army’s medical corps for the coming war. In May 1862 Hammond founded the Army Medical Museum, and that August he appointed Dr. John Brinton, a surgeon, as the museum’s curator and Joseph Woodward as Brinton’s assistant.

Brinton and Hammond shared a trait: They were inexhaustible in the search for improved medical knowledge. To that end, Brinton undertook the grisly but scientifically rewarding task of scouring the battlefields for specimens. (In a war that cost more than 550,000 lives, finding them was unfortunately not a problem.) He and Woodward compiled the information into the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, with Brinton writing the surgical material while Woodward produced the medical and disease sections. When they finished the work in the late 1880s, their research sprawled over six volumes and more than 6,000 pages. Once he began work on his section of the History, Brinton hired a staff of artists, enlisting them as hospital stewards and assigning them to military duty in the surgeon general’s office. In this capacity Hermann Faber joined the museum’s staff and produced many illustrations for the museum, mostly for Woodward’s medical section of the History.

Faber’s path to Washington, D.C., was a long and indirect one: Born in Germany on January 26, 1832, he studied illustration at the University of Giessen and emigrated to Philadelphia, where he married in 1853. He supported his family by producing anatomical illustrations until he joined Brinton and the museum in 1863.

In 1864 Brinton was abruptly relieved of his duties at the museum. Despite his medical qualifications, politics played a role in his dismissal, with several factors against him: He was a Hammond appointee, and Hammond had been court-martialed over purchasing Army blankets outside the usual channels (Stanton’s dislike of him didn’t help his case); he was a cousin of George McClellan (the discredited Union general and failed presidential candidate); and he was the proponent of a controversial and unpopular plan to retain volunteer surgeons equal in rank to the career Army surgeons after war’s end.

Faber’s sole cartoon concerned Brinton’s reassignment to normal medical duties. In his autobiography, Brinton recalls the circumstances surrounding the cartoon’s elements:

"I had been a long time in Washington, and had many friends. To some of these, I said good-bye, and to one of them, Mrs. Stephen A. Douglas, I sent a picture. I had often joked with her when officers had been sent away from Washington under the displeasure of the Secretary of War,—exiled, in fact, for the Secretary looked upon a detail to Louisville or St. Louis as a banishment, quite as in Russia they regard banishment to Siberia. Some officers took removal from Washington as a rather hard fate, but I had often told Mrs. Douglas that I was sure to be decapitated, but that when it came, like St. Denis (she, Mrs. Douglas, was a Catholic), I would lose my head with good grace. So I requested one of the artists of the Museum, Faber, a German of facile pencil, to make a pen-and-ink sketch of myself as St. Denis leaving the Museum, head in hand, for the region of the setting sun, with the bloody headman’s sword, the unfinished work of the Surgical History of the War, etc."

Brinton bestowed Faber’s resulting cartoon on Mrs. Douglas as a gift (no one knows if the original yet exists). The cartoon that today’s historian can view—the one accompanying this article—is Faber’s own re-creation of his first effort. Brinton recalled in his autobiography that Dr. Joseph K. Barnes, the new surgeon general, had heard of Faber’s cartoon and asked to see it. Woodward persuaded Faber to redraw it from memory. According to Brinton, he sensed the classically versed Woodward’s involvement in the motto Si tacuisses Philosophe mansisses (from Dante’s Inferno): “O if you had been silent, you would have then remained a philosopher.”

Barnes gave Faber’s second original to Secretary Stanton and, like its predecessor, its whereabouts are unknown.

Faber produced one other drawing of historical significance: a pencil drawing of President Abraham Lincoln’s deathbed. Lincoln had lain unconscious for several hours, and eventually died, in a boarding house across the street from Ford’s Theatre, where John Wilkes Booth assassinated him. Faber was brought into the room to sketch it immediately after Lincoln’s body had been removed. Barnes was among the doctors attending Lincoln after he was shot, and he approved Faber’s drawing for its accuracy. Of all the versions of Lincoln’s deathbed, Faber was the only one drawing from the scene. Like his St. Denis cartoon, Faber produced a second version of this work that now hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Because of his military service, Faber was granted American citizenship on October 31, 1868. By then, he had returned to Philadelphia and resumed his career as a medical illustrator, and he instructed two of his sons in the trade. In his twilight yearshe taught medical illustration. According to one of his colleagues,the etcher J.L.G. Ferris, Faber spent these years contentedly. “He was a master of the classical line and had considerable erudition,” he said. “Affable and kindly, he was always ready to give advice to the student. He had short shrift, however, for the lazy or insincere worker.”

Toward the end of Faber’s life, America had begun to put the Civil War behind herself and began assuming a less provincial and more global perspective. When Faber died on December 10, 1913, the United States stood at the precipice of a war with Germany—Faber’s homeland.

The isolated nonmedical illustrations Faber produced were the result of great national traumas: the United States tearing itself apart and its president being slain. Though history has largely overlooked Faber, his artwork is an interesting stitch in the fabric of American history.

From: cartoonician.com

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William A. Hammond, Surgeon General

Compiled by James M. Phalen, Colonel, Medical Corps, U.S. Army retired

WILLIAM ALEXANDER HAMMOND (Aug. 28, 1828 -Jan. 5, 1900), Surgeon General, April 25, 1862 - August 18, 1864, was born at Annapolis, Md., the son of Dr. John W. and Sarah (Pinkney) Hammond, members of two old Maryland families of Anne Arundel County.  When he was about five years old the family moved to Harrisburg, Pa., where his early education was completed at a local academy.

He began the study of medicine at sixteen and at twenty was given the degree of M. D. by the medical department of the University of the City of New York.  After a year of internship in the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, he settled in Saco, Me., for the practice of medicine.  He stayed there but a few months when he took the examination for the army medical service and was appointed as assistant surgeon on July 29, 1849.  Shortly thereafter he was sent with a body of troops to New Mexico, where during the following three years he served at nine different posts and was engaged a large part of the time in operations against the Indians.

After a sick leave spent in study in Europe he was stationed at West Point and later at Fort Meade, Florida, and Fort Riley, Kansas.  While at Fort Riley he served as medical director of a large force operating against the Sioux Indians and was medical officer with an expedition which located a road to Bridger's Pass in the Rocky Mountains.  From Fort Riley he was transferred to Fort Mackinac in Michigan.  During this first ten years of service he devoted his spare hours to physiological and botanical investigation and in 1857 he published an exhaustive 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 was awarded the American Medical Association Prize.

His growing reputation attracted the attention of the authorities of the University of Maryland and on October 31, 1860, he resigned from the army to accept the chair of anatomy and physiology in the medical school in Baltimore.  Here he taught with marked success and practiced his profession until the outbreak of the Civil War.

As surgeon to the Baltimore Infirmary he attended the wounded men of the 6th Massachusetts Infantry, who while marching to the defense of Washington were fired upon by a Baltimore mob.  He resigned his professorship and on May 28, 1861, he reentered the army as an assistant surgeon at the foot of the list upon which he had formerly held high place.

His first Civil War service was as medical purveyor at Frederick, Md.  Later he organized the Camden Street Hospital in Baltimore and was then transferred to the command of General Rosecrans in West Virginia where he was made inspector of camps and hospitals.  His work in this field attracted the favorable attention of the Sanitary Commission, which, dissatisfied with the administration of the medical service of the army, urged the removal of the incumbent head and the appointment of Hammond in his place.  Surgeon General Finley's break with Secretary Stanton brought the opportunity, and despite strong backing for the acting Surgeon General, Colonel R.C. Wood, and a candidate put forward by Secretary Stanton, Hammond was appointed Surgeon General on April 25, 1862.  Colonel Wood failing in his greater ambition, asked for the appointment as assistant Surgeon General, which upon Hammond's approval was given him.  Shortly, however, friction developed between the two and Wood was relieved from duty in the office, though he retained the title of assistant Surgeon General until October 31, 1865.  Major Joseph R. Smith was brought into the office to fill Wood's position.  The year and a half of Hammond's actual tenure of the office was marked by an administration of high efficiency and by many important accomplishments.  These included a new and vastly enlarged supply table and the provision of hospital clothing for patients.

There was a general reorganization of boards of examiners for entrance to the corps and increased standards for applicants.  A new and complete system of hospital reports was introduced, furnishing an amount of information later invaluable in the preparation of the medical history of the war.  On May 21, 1862, he directed the organization of the Army Medical Museum and the collection of specimens and material for its exhibition.  It was during his term that the most definite program was made in the construction and equipment of military hospitals.

That he was a man of vision is evidenced by the highly constructive recommendations that he made, all of which in the fullness of time have come into realization.  He recommended the formation of a permanent hospital corps, the establishment of an army medical school, the establishment of a permanent general hospital in Washington, the autonomy of the medical department in the construction of hospitals and the transportation of supplies, and the institution of a military medical laboratory.

It was inevitable, however, that the masterful personality of Hammond would excite the disapproval of such an autocratic spirit as Secretary Stanton.  Their official and personal relations early became strained and there was constant friction in the conduct of business between the two officers.  This situation culminated in orders issued in the latter part of August 1863 relieving Hammond from charge of the Washington office and directing him to duty inspecting sanitary conditions in the Department of the South with his headquarters in New Orleans.

On Sept. 3, 1863, medical inspector general Joseph K. Barnes was placed in charge of the Surgeon General's office.  The anomalous situation in which he was placed caused General Hammond to demand the restoration of his office or trial by court-martial.  In consequence he was tried on charges and specifications alleging his involvement in irregularities incident to the purchase of medical supplies.  The prosecution was pushed with bitterness and apparent personal animosity.  It is said that the finding of the court-martial was for acquittal, but that this finding was disapproved and a reconsideration directed which resulted in a verdict of guilty and a sentence of dismissal from the army.  The dismissal took effect August 18, 1864.

Upon leaving the army Hammond found himself in straitened circumstances from the expense of his trial.  With the help of friends he was able to establish himself in practice in New York, and in a short time he became a leader in the practice and teaching of neurology, a specialty then in its infancy.  Soon after his arrival in New York he was appointed lecturer on nervous and mental diseases in the College of Physicians and Surgeons.  He resigned this position in 1867 to accept the professorship of the same subjects which bad been created for him in the faculty of Bellevue Hospital Medical College.  In 1874 he transferred to a like professorship in the medical department of the University of the City of New York.  At other times he was on the faculty of the University of Vermont at Burlington and of the Post Graduate Medical School of New York, of which he was one of the founders.

In 1878, then at the height of his success and popularity, he started a campaign for vindication of his conduct of the office of Surgeon General.  Under an act of Congress approved. March 15, 1878 (20 Stat. 511), he was restored to the army and placed upon the retired list as Surgeon General with the grade of brigadier general, without pay or allowances, on August 27, 1879.  In 1888 he moved to Washington where he established a large sanatorium for the care of cases of nervous and mental diseases.  It became necessary for him gradually to limit his professional work on account of a cardiac ailment from which he died at his Washington home on Jan. 5, 1900.  During his later years he became much interested in the therapeutic employment of animal extracts and did much to instruct the medical profession in their use.

Throughout his career Hammond was a facile writer.  While carrying the responsibilities of Surgeon General he found time to write a "Treatise on Hygiene, with Special Reference to the Military Service" (1863).  The most noteworthy of his other medical works were: "On Wakefulness: With an Introductory Chapter on the Physiology of Sleep" (1866), "Sleep and Its Derangements" (1869), "Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism" (1871), and "Insanity in its Medical Relations" (1883).  In 1871 he published his "Treatise on Diseases of the Nervous System", a well written book largely based on the lectures of Charcot.  This was announced as "the first text-book of nervous diseases in the English language."

He was also a playwrite and novelist.  For a time he was editor of the "Maryland and Virginia Journal", published in Richmond and Baltimore.  In 1867 he established the Quarterly Journal of Psychological Medicine and Medical Jurisprudence, of which he was editor until 1875.  He also cooperated (1867-1869) in the founding and editing of the "New York Medical Journal" and of the "Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases" (1867-1883).

General Hammond was a pioneer in field of nervous and mental diseases in the United States.  American neurology began with the Civil War, from the experiences gained by Hammond, S. Weir Mitchell, and William W. Keen.  He was a dominant personality in any field he entered, attracting a following and developing active enemies.  From a certain penchant for theatrical action he could not escape entirely from a reputation for charlatanry.  Personally he was an uncommonly large man, six feet two inches in height, and of two hundred and fifty pounds weight.  He had a powerful voice, a pleasing delivery, and a flow of language which made him a popular speaker.  He was married twice: in July 1849 to Helen Nisbet, daughter of Michael Nisbet of Philadelphia, and in 1886 to Esther T. Chapin.

Sources:  H. E. Brown, Medical Department of the U. S. Army from 1775 to 1873 (1873);  P. M. Ashburn, History of the Medical Department of the U. S. Army (1929);  The Post Graduate, N. Y., May 1900;  J. E. Pilcher, Surgeon Generals of the Army (1905);  Kelly and Burrage, American Medical Biographies (1920); Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. VIII (1932).

[Extracted from "Chiefs of the Medical Department, U.S. Army 1775-1940, Biographical Sketches,"  Army Medical Bulletin, no. 52, April 1940, pp. 42-46]

From: history.amedd.army.mil

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The Army Medical Museum

Union Surgeon-General William Hammond established the Army Medical Museum in May of 1862. It was the first federal medical research facility. Its mission was to study and improve medical conditions during the Civil War. The material collected by the Museum in the course of the conflict would be the basis for a revolutionary reference work detailing every medical condition encountered during the war.

The Museum was designed to teach comprehensive pathology to students, clinicians and pathologists. It had an emphasis on research in disease.

Joseph Janvier Woodward, M.D., was put in charge of the Washington Museum. He had served as an assistant surgeon with the Army of the Potomac, but spent most of his career in the Surgeon-General’s office.

Dr. Woodward had a passionate commitment to the Museum. He supervised the collecting of material that would be presented for publication and the education of new generations of physicians.

Artists were sent to the battlefields to detail the effects of recent wounds, and patients in hospitals were photographed. More than 5,000 illustrations of military surgery were classified and arranged to be available for scientific study.

After the war and into the 20th century, the Museum staff engaged in medical research, including important work on infectious diseases like yellow fever. They made contributions to research on vaccines for typhoid fever. They led campaigns for health education including information on combating sexually transmitted diseases.

The Museum research focused increasingly on pathology, and in the 1940’s it evolved into the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the National Museum of Health and Medicine . The Library became the National Library of Medicine.

Today’s National Museum of Health and Medicine has a collection of more than one million items. Its concentration reflects the history and practice of American medicine, military medicine and current medical research issues.

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