JAMES THACHER

Barnstable, Massachusetts
1754–1844
One Significant Contribution


James Thacher was twenty-one years old and just out of medical school when he began treating Revolutionary War soldiers in 1775. He is best known for his writings, including an 1823 military journal which revealed valuable information about the quality—or lack thereof—of medical facilities and treatment available to soldiers during the war. Harvard and Dartmouth presented him with honorary master of arts and doctor of medicine degrees, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences named him a fellow. He wasn’t always a popular “fellow” with his colleagues, though. He was sometimes outspoken and critical of American medical services during the war, which is something historians tend to overlook.

Quacks Need Not Apply

After James Thacher finished medical school in mid-1775, he apprenticed to the Cape Cod physician Abner Hersey, one of the early members of the Massachusetts Medical Society. Thacher was barely of legal age when he became a doctor in the Continental Army.

Even though the Continental Army did not give soldiers’ medical treatment a high priority at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, it did apply strict criteria to the selection of doctors. In Thatcher’s selection group, sixteen candidates for assignments as doctors with the Continental Army assembled for their entrance exams in early July 1775. They appeared for four hours in front of a board for examination. Board members grilled them about four subjects: anatomy, physiology, surgery, and medicine. Only ten of the candidates were accepted. The others were rejected as being unqualified.

Thacher cleared the qualifying hurdle and earned acceptance into the army’s medical corps. He was appointed to a post as a surgeon’s mate in the provincial hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where John Warren was the senior surgeon. Thacher looked at that as a benefit, because of Warren’s excellent reputation and his compassionate care of the soldiers.

FEDERAL FACTS

Smallpox, which John Adams said was “ten times more terrible than Britons, Canadians, and Indians together,” killed more people than bullets during the Revolutionary War.

Thacher started working on July 15 in “hospitals.” They were really large private homes in Cambridge which were open to accommodate the soldiers who had been wounded at Breed’s (Bunker) Hill or contracted one of the various diseases that ravaged them and the population in general at the time. As bad as the hospitals were in 1775, they got worse as the fighting intensified.

Thacher did not stay in Cambridge long. Later, he participated in the expedition of Ticonderoga and at the siege of Yorktown. Thacher witnessed the surrender of General Cornwallis and the execution of Major John André before retiring from army service in 1783 and settling in Plymouth, Massachusetts. During his eight-year enlistment, he produced some intriguing observations.

Descriptive, If Not Educational

Thacher’s written contributions did not reveal any major medical milestones. Rather, they gave vivid pictures of hospitals, doctors, and treatments at the time. Thacher had the opportunity to work with Dr. Jonathan Potts, who managed the army’s northern department of medical services. Potts, like so many other department heads, was overworked, understaffed, and poorly supplied.

REVOLUTIONARY REVELATIONS

Thacher was a hard worker. At the hospitals in Saratoga in 1777, he cared for patients daily from 8 A.M. to late evening. Generally, he had twenty wounded men under his care at any one time.

Because Thacher spent so much time working with wounded soldiers, he had little time for research, which was not unusual as the war progressed. Whatever new techniques or treatments he applied were learned through repetition, practice, and osmosis.

Very few doctors had a chance to do any innovative research during the war, since the demands on their time limited their abilities to find new ways to treat sick and wounded soldiers. They did what they could. Thacher simply reported on their endeavors, rather than contribute significantly to research efforts.

Among his observations, Thacher alluded to the fact that the medical community had not made any groundbreaking inroads into treating disease or illness six years into the war in an April 20, 1781, journal entry. He commented that 187 soldiers in his regiment had contracted smallpox. Worse, he noted, the lack of food hindered any treatment.

The military medical community was unhappy with the perpetual shortage of food and supplies at its disposal throughout the war. Men like Thacher and Benjamin Rush did their best with what they had.

After the War

When the war ended, Thacher returned to Massachusetts and established a private practice. He had not distinguished himself from other military surgeons with whom he had served. His most significant contribution came forty years later.

Thacher busied himself with his medical practice and civic projects in his hometown of Plymouth. In 1796, he and his brother-in-law, Dr. Nathan Hayward, established the first stagecoach line between Plymouth and Boston. Thacher introduced the tomato plant and the use of anthracite coal in Plymouth.

Like his mentor, Dr. Hersey, Thacher became a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society. His willingness to adopt new ideas and advance ideas that most of his peers had not even considered made him one of the most respected members of the association.

He wrote several books, including Observations on Hydrophobia (1812), A Practical Treatise on the Management of Bees (1829), and An Essay on Demonology, Ghosts, Apparitions and Popular Superstitions. His military journal became Thacher’s biggest contribution to the history of the Revolutionary War.

James Thacher’s name may never be mentioned in the same breath with John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or other Founding Fathers, but he did make that one significant contribution to the lore of the war. That was all it took to preserve his memory.