Howard was born on February 7, 1881 in Cheyenne, Wyoming, United States, the son of Albert C. Snyder, a Western Union telegrapher and office manager and subsequently a meat dealer, and Priscilla McClelland McCrum. Snyder, whose father died in 1891, was raised in comfortable circumstances.
He attended local schools, the University of Colorado (1899 - 1901), and Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, where he received his M. D. in 1905. He enrolled at the Army Medical School in Washington in 1907 and graduated with the highest honors in 1908.
Snyder interned at Presbyterian Hospital in Philadelphia. Snyder returned west to practice medicine and to work as an army contract surgeon at Fort Douglas, Utah. In 1908 he was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Medical Corps of the regular army. For the next two years Snyder was stationed with the Research Board for Tropical Medicine in the Philippines. Between 1911 and 1917 Snyder held various assignments in the United States.
Promoted to captain in 1911 and to major in May 1917, Snyder was an instructor at training camps for medical officers during World War I and in July 1918 was assigned to command a Medical Corps school for noncommissioned officers at Camp Greenleaf. During the 1920's Snyder served at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, and pursued advanced studies at the Mayo Clinic. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1928 and to colonel six years later.
Assigned as an instructor with the medical detachments of the New York National Guard in the mid-1930's, Snyder subsequently served from 1936 to 1940 as medical adviser with the National Guard Bureau, Washington. In this position he supervised on behalf of the army the training and facilities of National Guard medical personnel throughout the United States.
Snyder was promoted to brigadier general in October 1940 and in December of that year was named assistant inspector general. He traveled extensively, compiling reports on the health problems of draftees, the care of battle casualties, and evacuation and hospitalization. He was promoted to major general in 1943.
On March 1, 1945, he was technically retired for age but was at once recalled to active duty to serve as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's personal physician. He remained with Eisenhower until 1948 while the latter was army chief of staff. When Eisenhower retired from the army to become president of Columbia University in 1948, Snyder too moved to New York City.
Snyder was recalled to active duty in 1951 to join Eisenhower at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Europe. The relationship between Snyder and Eisenhower was one of close friendship and esteem.
In retirement Snyder sought to write a narrative medical history of Eisenhower, who had been the first president to have a heart attack or ileitis surgery while in office. Snyder gathered the necessary materials but had written only three draft chapters when his own ill health forced him to stop work in 1966.
He died at Walter Reed Hospital, Washington.
In a medical career that spanned more than half a century, Howard McCrum Snyder will probably be remembered chiefly for his eight years as White House physician. His most enduring contribution, however, occurred during World War II when he became the first medical doctor in the army's Office of the Inspector General. He used his unprecedented influence to help remedy shortcomings in the practice of medicine under conditions of total war.
He married Alice Elizabeth Concklin on July 12, 1910, and had two sons.
