Joseph Lovell - Service As Surgeon General

Service As Surgeon General

Less than thirty years of age and with but six years of service when he became Surgeon General, Lovell's eighteen years' tenure of office were marked by constant improvement in the efficiency of the service and in the status of the officers of the corps. With a wholesome pride in his office and in the service which he represented, he strove to foster that same pride throughout the corps and to render the military establishment conscious of its obligations to the medical service. Quite beyond the medical department he rendered conspicuous service to every branch and department of the army. More than any other person he was responsible for the abolition of the whiskey ration which was making drunkards throughout the army. He was largely instrumental in the passage by Congress of a bill by which unsuitable and inefficient officers could be eliminated from the army by action of a board of officers. From his personal observations he was able to make recommendations which brought about notable improvements in the ration and clothing of the soldier. One of his first acts as Surgeon General was to require from all army posts quarterly reports by the medical officers on weather conditions and on the incidence and causes of diseases. The compilations of these reports have high historic value. The weather reports thus begun were the beginning of the present Weather Bureau. A notable service by Lovell was the encouragement and official assistance which he gave to Surgeon William Beaumont in the study of gastric physiology.

Lovell's office began the collection of medical literature which was to become the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, later called the Army Medical Library, the Armed Forces Medical Library, and finally transformed in 1956 into the National Library of Medicine.

In 1842, the officers of the medical corps testified to their appreciation of Lovell's services to them and to their personal esteem for him by the erection of a handsome monument over his grave in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington.