The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 7: Prisons and Hospitals.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

Some of the names on this medical roll of honor from the regular army are those of Finley, Hammond, Barnes, Crane, Murray, Moore, Sutherland, Baxter, Sternberg, and Forwood, all of them surgeons-general during or after the war. Others were Letterman, Smart, Woodward, Huntington, Otis, Woodhull, Smith, Greenleaf, and others whose great services might be mentioned. Many of these men became figures of national importance in a medical and surgical sense. Some in their time were recognized as the highest authorities the world over in respect to the professional subjects with which they had been particularly identified.

Contrary to the usual idea of the general public, army medical officers have many important duties outside the actual professional treatment of sick and wounded. Far-reaching health measures, under the direction of the commander, are in their hands. Vast hospitals must be organized, equipped, supplied, and administered, to which sick and wounded by the hundreds of thousands must be transported and distributed. This latter problem can advantageously be met only in the light of broad knowledge of military organization, methods, and purposes. There are subordinates to be enlisted, equipped, cared for, trained, and disciplined. An elaborate system of records, upon the accuracy of which the whole pension system of the Government rests, must be maintained. And upon the handful of trained regular medical officers the responsibility for efficient direction of the above-mentioned business management of the Medical Department had, at the outset of the Civil War, to devolve. From it, as a nucleus, there developed a scheme of organization of the medical service for war which remains the prototype upon which similar organization in all the armies of the world is now based, while administrative methods were worked out which still remain our standard for the management of similar conditions and emergencies.