September 2008

Out of the Archives: Columbian College’s Civil War Doctors

Onetime colleagues at GW predecessor Columbian College, Robert King Stone and A.Y.P. Garnett took separate sides with the outbreak of the Civil War, each serving as personal physician for his leader. Stone, a professor of anatomy and physiology, was Abraham Lincoln’s doctor and was at the president’s bedside when he died. He later gave an account of Lincoln’s death as part of the military commission that tried the surviving eight conspirators.

Garnett, a professor of anatomy and clinical medicine, left Washington to become Jefferson Davis’ physician. He had to ask permission and obtain a passport from the secretary of war to travel to the South. Garnett later became physician to the Lee family as well. He returned to his practice in Washington at the end of the war.

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