The new issue of Penn Medicine magazine (Winter 2014) includes a fascinating profile of Samuel W. Crawford, who graduated from Penn’s medical school in 1850. As the writer, Jon Caroulis, notes, one year after successfully presenting a paper on hypertrophy and atrophy and earning his medical degree, Crawford joined the U.S. Army. As an Army surgeon, he spent nearly 10 years at frontier posts, such as Texas and New Mexico. Then came the Civil War and all its devastating changes.
It is not surprising that doctors who had medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania were widely represented on both sides of the war: Penn’s was the oldest and one of the most prominent medical schools in the nation and drew many students from the South. According to W. Barksdale Maynard, 800 alumni served as surgeons in the Union forces, while Confederate hospitals were staffed with more than 500 of Penn’s graduates (The Pennsylvania Gazette, March / April 2011). In fact, when the Civil War broke out, the Surgeons General of both sides had received their degrees from Penn’s medical school: Clement A. Finley (1834) and David C. DeLeon (1836). So Dr. Crawford certainly had company in his new duties.
Seeing a notice the other day about the 13th Annual Penn Presbyterian Benefit got me to thinking in general about doctors during wartime -- the doctors, that is, who are actually involved in battle or care for the wounded. The theme of the Presby benefit, scheduled for March 7, is “Top Gun” and will be honoring the life of John P. Pryor, M.D., a trauma surgeon at HUP and an assistant professor of surgery who had done his training at Penn.
Two years after his first tour of duty in Iraq, serving as a major in the United States Army Reserve Medical Corps, Pryor returned to Iraq for a second tour. On Christmas Day of 2008, he was killed by enemy mortar shrapnel. Pryor was in Iraq out of a deep sense of commitment. As he put it in a message during his first tour, Death was a devious adversary: “When I decided to be a trauma surgeon, it became an all-out war between him and I.” But, he continued, as a war surgeon, “I have seen a level of destruction that even I thought was not possible.” Nevertheless, Pryor left Penn Medicine a second time and returned to fight against this more powerful, more daunting Death.
In the case of Samuel Crawford, we don’t have quite so specific a motivation. And Crawford’s outlook seemed to change dramatically. During the Civil War and after going through 34 straight hours of bombardment as a member of the Union force at Fort Sumter, he decided to change his course. Richard Wagner, author of a book about Crawford, speculates that he didn’t particularly care for the prospect of constantly operating on wounded soldiers and amputating limbs -- and he seemed always attracted to adventure. Early in the war, Crawford accepted a commission as a major in the 13th U.S. Infantry. He saw much action, was himself severely wounded at Antietam, and fought at Gettysburg. Eventually, he was promoted to major general.
After his service in the Army, Crawford was able to create his own legacy as an author and historian. The University presented him with an honorary law degree in 1867, and he published a massive history of the genesis of the Civil War in 1887.
Those at Penn Medicine who knew John Pryor are determined to keep his spirit alive. The Presby benefit “will celebrate his life as we carry on his legacy of providing excellent care to patients.” The proceeds from the event will go toward the John Paul Pryor, MD, FACS, Shock Trauma and Resuscitation (STAR) Unit in the new Trauma Center at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. On the national scene, the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST), based in Chicago, presents an annual award to its members who have distinguished themselves in the field of military casualty care. The award is named after Pryor -- and for 2014, the recipient is none other than C. William Schwab, MD, FACS, a professor of surgery at HUP and former chief of its Division of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care. Even more telling, Schwab was Pryor’s mentor at Penn. “At his core were many great values,” said Schwab after Pryor’s death, “but his passion was for service to others.”