James Mann

Background

James Mann was born on July 22, 1759 in Wrentham, Massachussets. He was the son of David and Anna Mann and a descendant of William Mann, an early settler in Cambridge, Massachussets.

Education

He graduated from Harvard at the age of seventeen and then took up the study of medicine under Dr. Samuel Danforth.

Career

At the age of twenty he became surgeon of Col. William Shepard's 4th Massachusetts Regiment. In June of 1781 he was captured by the British and was imprisoned on Long Island during July and August. He left the army because of poor health on April 14, 1782. He settled first at Wrentham but later moved to New York, where he practised until the outbreak of the War of 1812. Entering the army as a hospital surgeon, he was soon put in charge of the medical department on the northern frontier. Upon the establishment of peace in 1815 he apparently left the service, as his name is not in the next army register, but in August 1816 he is again shown as the senior hospital surgeon, on duty at Detroit. The reorganization of 1818, which established the medical corps and consolidated the hospital, garrison, and regimental surgeons on one list of post surgeons, ranked according to seniority, put him number twenty-four on that list. The reorganization of 1821, which reduced the number of surgeons to eight, left him an assistant surgeon. He served in that grade until his death, which occurred at Governor's Island on November 7, 1832.

Mann was a scholarly person and an interesting writer. He published articles on the defeat of the Indians at Wrentham, and on diabetes, cholera infantum, pneumonia, amputations through joints, swelling of the inferior extremities of puerperal women, and on menorrhagia and leucorrhea and their treatment. But his fame rests principally upon his Medical Sketches of the Campaigns of 1812, 13, 14, to which are added Surgical Cases, Observations on Military Hospitals; and Flying Hospitals Attached to a Moving Army, Also An Appendix . .. (1816). The sketches, written in good English, reveal striking powers of observation. They describe not only the medical affairs of the Northern army but the country and the frontier villages of that day, when Buffalo, two miles above Black Rock, was a village of less than 200 houses, though rapidly increasing in population and trade. By an ironical fate, he was the individual victim of well-meant general legislation, which, though he had ranked next after the head of the department, left him an assistant surgeon at the time of his death at the age of seventy-three.

Achievements

• Mann was one of the most notable army surgeons of his day. His professional standing is witnessed by the fact that in 1819, while stationed in Boston, he was elected one of the eight consulting physicians of the Massachusetts General Hospital. He was also awarded an honorary degree of M. D. from Brown University in 1815.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Medical Sketches of the Campaigns of 1812, 13, 14: To Which Are Added, Surgical Cases, Observations on Military Hospitals, and Flying Hospitals ... on Dysentery Which Obtained The...

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

Connections

Mann was married, December 12, 1788, to Martha (or Mary) Tyler. They had five children.

Father:

David Mann

Mother:

Anna Mann

Wife:

Martha (or Mary) Tyler