1. Joseph Lovell was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of James S and Deborah Lovell.
16 Facts About Joseph Lovell
1. 2.
Joseph Lovell's grandfather, James Lovell, was an active member of the Whig organization in Boston before the Revolution, and was a member of the Continental Congress from 1777 to 1782.
3.
Joseph Lovell was one of the prime movers in the scheme to supplant General Washington as commander-in-chief by General Horatio Gates.
4.
Joseph Lovell was an original member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati.
5.
On May 15,1812, Joseph Lovell was appointed major and surgeon, 9th US Infantry Regiment.
6.
Joseph Lovell attracted attention not only as a skilled practitioner but as an officer of marked executive ability.
7.
Pursuant to this legislation, Lovell was appointed Surgeon General to date from April 18,1818, with Hospital Surgeons Tobias Watkins and James C Bronaugh, assistants, one for each of the two divisions of the army.
8.
Joseph Lovell saw as an early duty the revision of the Medical Regulations.
9.
Joseph Lovell began his recommendations with the statement that the first requisite was to make the position of a medical officer such that he would place some value upon the retention of his office, at that time held in low esteem.
10.
Joseph Lovell asked an increase in the number of medical officers and an increase in their pay and allowances.
11.
Joseph Lovell recommended further that the Apothecary General be authorized to make all purchases of medical supplies and that purchasing officers be bonded for the proper application of public funds.
12.
Joseph Lovell asked for an increase of medical officers and a small addition was authorized on July 4,1835.
13.
Joseph Lovell died in Washington on October 17,1836, near the end of his forty-eighth year.
14.
Joseph Lovell's death, preceded by a few months by that of his wife, Margaret Mansfield Joseph Lovell, left an orphaned family of eleven children.
15.
Joseph Lovell 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.
16.
Joseph 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.