Cushing/Whitney Medical Library

Historical Library

Yale-New Haven Hospital

St. Raphael Healthcare System

The Knight Hospital and the Civil War

The Knight Hospital

In the fall of 1862, the directors of the State Hospital leased the hospital building to the United States government for a military hospital. (Regular hospital functions were carried out in rented quarters on Whalley Avenue.) The military hospital was named the Knight U.S. Army General Hospital, after Jonathan Knight, president of the Board of the Directors of the General Hospital Society of Connecticut and professor at the Medical Institution of Yale College. The military built temporary quarters on the hospital land, and were thus able to accommodate 1,500 patients. 25,340 soldiers were treated in the Knight Hospital from 1862 to 1865 with only 185 deaths.

Yale-New Haven Hospital Archives

Jonathan Knight (1789-1864)

Jonathan Knight was one of the founding professors of the Medical Institution of Yale College and a leading surgeon in Connecticut. He served first as professor of Anatomy and Physiology from 1813 to 1838, and then as Professor of Surgery from 1838 to 1864. He was one of the incorporators of the General Hospital Society of Connecticut. Noted for his skill as an organizer, Knight served as President of the Board of Directors from 1842 to his death in 1864. He was president of the National Medical Convention that formed the American Medical Association in 1846, and subsequently served as president of the AMA in 1853-1854.

The original oil portrait by Nathaniel Jocelyn in 1827 hangs in the gallery above the rotunda of the Medical Library.

Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library.

Staff of the Knight Hospital, about 1864

Back row: Unidentified Army surgeon, Drs. Timothy H. Bishop, H.S. Pierpont, T. Beers Townsend, Charles A. Lindsley, Virgil M. Dow, unidentified Army Surgeon. Front row: Drs. David L. Daggett, Levi D. Wilcoxson, Pliny A. Jewett, Worthington Hooker, W.B. Casey. Of these men, most were graduates of the Medical Institution of Yale College. Hooker was Professor of Theory and Practice of Medicine. Lindsley, a graduate of the medical school in 1852, was Professor of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, and Pliny A. Jewett, a graduate of the medical school in 1840, was Professor of Obstetrics.

Historical Library, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library

Knight Hospital Record, April 5, 1865

The Historical Library owns a number of issues of this rare publication of the Knight Hospital. This issue announced the fall of Richmond to the Union army.