Dr. Jonathan Letterman — Father of Battlefield Medicine
Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
A child named Jonathan Letterman grew up on East Pike Street in Canonsburg, Washington County. He became a military surgeon. And what he invented during the Civil War is still saving lives on battlefields today.
Before Letterman took charge as Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac in eighteen sixty-two, the treatment of battlefield wounded was often a matter of chance. Men lay where they fell until someone happened upon them. Medical supplies arrived when they arrived. Letterman changed everything.
He designed a standardized medical supply wagon that kept essential equipment organized and accessible. He put in place a formal triage system, a method for rapidly sorting the wounded by severity so that surgeons could treat the most urgent cases first. He established a disciplined ambulance corps and evacuation network that moved injured soldiers off the field in hours rather than days.
After the battle, a large general hospital was built at Gettysburg and named Camp Letterman in his honor. It treated the wounded of both armies. The entire system he built was adopted across the Union Army and then, after the war, became the template for military medicine worldwide.
His childhood home stood here. The science of saving lives under fire began in this Pennsylvania town.
