My patient, a long-term member of the United States military, has given me an astonishing book-- The Harvard Volunteers in Europe, edited by M.A. DeWolfe Howe. It was published November 2, 1916. This work was pubished approximately halfway through the First World War. I'm holding in my hands a book that's almost a hundred years old, and that relays the experiences of medical volunteers while the war was still raging. This is a priceless window into one of humanity's greatest calamities.
The Harvard Volunteers were graduates from the university itself and from the Harvard Medical School and Harvard Dental School. They volunteered in England and France, mostly as ambulance drivers, surgeons and dentists. Their goal was to help treat the numberless wounded in that terrible conflict. The conflict of trenches, machine guns, shells by the millions, poison gas and "going over the top." A significant number of these volunteers were killed in their service; all took a tremendous risk, and provided invaluable medical services to the wounded soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
Here in this post I wish to remember the American dentists of the Harvard Volunteers. Their names shall be celebrated and not forgotten. As my remarkable book only carries us to November 1916, there are more names to be researched and brought out of the past; I shall post them when I am able to do so.
Gentlemen, I honor you, who are among the noblest of colleagues in our profession of dentistry, and it pleases me greatly to share your names with the world in a manner that you could not even imagine in 1916--
Ferdinand Brigham, D.M.D. '15, Harvard Surgical Unit, Dental Department
Frederick J. Caldwell, D.M.D. '14, Harvard Surgical Unit
R.S. Catheryon, D.M.D. '05, Harvard Surgical Unit
Frank H. Cushman, D.M.D. '15, Harvard Surgical Unit
John F. Dillon, D.M.D. '15, Harvard Surgical Unit
Samuel A. Hopkins, M.D., '80, Instructor in Dental Pathology, Harvard Dental School; Harvard Surgical Unit
V.K. Kazanjian, D.M.D. '05, Harvard Surgical Unit
Chauncey N. Lewis, D.M.D. '15, Harvard Surgical Unit
Charles F. McDonald, Jr., D.M.D. '10, Harvard Surgical Unit
Harrison L. Parker, D.M.D. '13, Harvard Surgical Unit
William H. Potter, '78, D.M.D. '85, Dental Surgeon in American Ambulance Hospital, Paris (Dr. Potter must have been 60 years old in 1916!)
Frank Stuhl, D.M.D. '05, American Ambulance Hospital, Paris
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