Alfred Alexander Woodhull

Background

Alfred Woodhull was born on 13 April 1837 in Princeton, New Jersey. He was the son of Alfred Alexander Woodhull, a physician, and Anna Maria Salomons.

Education

Woodhull prepared at Lawrenceville School for the College of New Jersey, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1856 and that of master's degree in 1859, the latter coincident with his graduation from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania.

Career

During the two years following Woodhull's graduation, he practiced medicine, first at Leavenworth and later at Eudora, Kan. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Alfred was active in the recruitment of a troop of mounted rifles for the Kansas militia, in which he was commissioned a lieutenant. Before the unit was mustered into the Federal service, on September 19, 1861, he received an appointment to the medical corps of the regular army. He served throughout the war on various field and hospital duties. His most important assignment was to the Army of the James as a medical inspector from 1864 to 1865. He received the brevet of lieutenant-colonel for faithful and meritorious service in March 1865. At the close of the war, Woodhull was assigned to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, where he prepared the "Surgical Section" of the Catalogue of the United States Army Medical Museum (1866), an important volume supplementary to the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Important details, following a long tour of duty in the office of the surgeon-general, included the position of instructor in military hygiene at the Infantry and Cavalry School at Fort Leavenworth from 1886 to 1890 and command of the Army and Navy Hospital at Hot Springs during 1892-1895.

In 1895 he was detailed as medical inspector of the department of Colorado, and in 1899 he became a chief surgeon of the department of the Pacific at Manila.

He was retired in 1901 and in 1904 he was advanced to the grade of brigadier-general on the retired list. After his retirement, he returned to Princeton, where for five years (1902-1907) he was a lecturer on personal hygiene and general sanitation at the university. He continued his residence in Princeton to the time of his death.

For fifty years Woodhull was an industrious contributor to medical literature. In 1868 he published "A Medical Report upon the Uniform and Clothing of the Soldiers of the United States Army." He contributed several papers on the pharmacology and clinical use of ipecacuanha, advocating the use of the drug in the treatment of dysentery, a practice since generally accepted.

Woodhull was awarded the gold medal of the Military Service Institution for his paper on "The Enlisted Soldier," which was published in its Journal for March 1887; in 1907 he received the Seaman prize for an article on the scope of instruction in hygiene and sanitation for military and naval service schools, published in the same Journal, March-April 1908.

In 1891 Alfred Woodhull was sent to England to make a study of the medical service of the British Army, upon which he published a report in 1894. He wrote "Provisional Manual for Exercise of Company Bearers and Hospital Corps" (1889), and "Notes on Military Hygiene for Officers of the Line," which went through four editions (1898-1909). He supplemented his lectures at Princeton by writing "Personal Hygiene: Designed for Undergraduates" (1906). His non-medical writings included a "Quarter Century Report of the Class of 1856 of the College of New Jersey" (1881) and "The Battle of Princeton" (1913), a tactical study of that engagement.

Achievements

• Woodhull published many articles on military hygiene, winning the Gold Medal (1885) and Seaman Prize (1907) of the Military Service Institution. Woodhull was the first to pay attention to the service the necessity of cooperation between the medical and line officers in the promotion of military hygiene.

Works

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• book

  • Military Hygiene, for Officers of the Line 1909
  • Notes On Military Hygiene: For Officers Of The Line, A Syllabus Of Lectures Formerly Delivered At The United States Infantry And Cavalry School 1898
  • Catalogue of the Surgical Section 1866
  • Studies, Chiefly Clinical, in the Non-emetic Use of Ipecacuanha 1876
  • The Battle of Princeton: A Preliminary Study 1913
  • Provisional Manual for Exercise of Company Bearers and Hospital Corps (Classic Reprint)

Views

Alfred Alexander Woodhull argued that sanitation was essential for maintaining military effectiveness and that it was the line officer's duty to safeguard the health of his troops. Disease prevention was the key. Woodhull's views were vindicated when the Spanish-American War exposed the culpability of line officers in the 1898 typhoid fever epidemic and awakened the army to thew need for educational reform.

Membership

Woodhull was one of the early members (1894) of the Association of Military Surgeons.

Personality

Alfred Woodhull had a strong sense of personal dignity, which somewhat masked a disposition essentially kind.

His mind was a storehouse of the most accurate medico-military knowledge, especially in regard to the Civil War.

Connections

On December 15, 1868, Alfred married Margaret Ellicott. They didn't have children.

Father:

Alfred Alexander Woodhull

Mother:

Anna Maria Salomons Woodhull

Wife:

Margaret Ellicott Woodhull

References

• Encyclopedia of New Jersey
  2004
• New Jerseyans in the Civil War: For Union and Liberty
  2000