Back in the Day

By Peter Galvin, MD

The American Revolution began 250 years ago last month and was memorialized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in words that would be recited by generations of American schoolchildren: “Listen, my children, and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” But what Longfellow didn’t memorialize was the role doctors played during the war. Back then, physicians were very prominent members of society and were looked upon as leaders. Take, for example, the life of Dr. Joseph Warren. Born in 1741 in the Massachusetts Bay area, he attended Roxbury Latin School and enrolled in Harvard College in 1755 (yes, at age 14). After a stint as a schoolteacher, he studied medicine under a prominent physician and opened his medical practice at age 22. He established his reputation by inoculating patients during the 1764 smallpox epidemic. He took on his own apprentices, including his younger brother John.

It was Warren’s intelligence network that uncovered the British plan to invade Massachusetts. He dispatched Revere to warn the populace, and he fought in the front lines at Bunker Hill, where he was killed. His death was portrayed by John Trumbull in 1786 in his painting “The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775.” Before his death, Warren’s political activity grew with his medical practice. Starting in 1765, the British imposed taxes and tariffs (sound familiar?) on its American colonies. With his longtime friend Samuel Adams, Warren wrote dozens of editorials excoriating the British. In March 1770, British regulars fired into an unruly crown, which would come to be called the Boston Massacre. Dr. Warren treated the casualties. Two years later, he delivered an oration commemorating the massacre, a highly visible protest. Many historians believe that Warren had a central role in organizing the Boston Tea Party (1773).

Warren served in or led many of the groups that organized the growing resistance to British tyranny, including the Sons of Liberty. Warren collected information from his patients, many of whom were Tories loyal to England and British soldiers. Despite his politics, he treated everyone regardless. In February 1775, he organized militia to move artillery pieces to Concord, further away from the British. When he learned the British planned on marching to Concord, he called up more militia – the Minutemen. After the battles of Lexington and Concord, he engaged the retreating British, where he lost a lock of hair to a British bullet. Warren and the other doctors with him treated all the wounded, including the British. Apparently, they saw no contradiction between their role as fighters and their obligation as healers.

After “the shot heard round the world,” Warren helped organize an army of 15,000 New Englanders. Each regiment was supposed to have two doctors, but it was before physicians were licensed, so Warren established a commission to evaluate doctors’ competence. Warren dressed in his finest for Bunker Hill and was said to have fought valiantly. After the battle, his brother John came looking for Warren and was stabbed in the chest by a British sentry. For decades afterward he showed his scar with pride. After the war ended, John Warren helped found the Massachusetts Medical Society in 1781 and Harvard Medical School in 1782. By the 20th century, Joseph Warren’s fame had been eclipsed by Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton. But it was Warren whose stratagems helped transition from protest to rebellion. This story was excerpted from the New England Journal of Medicine.

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