Name/Title
Harvard Medical Diploma and a coincidenceDescription
I was looking for the signature of the important medical figure and Harvard professor Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes when I ran across it on an 1861 Harvard diploma. What followed was an amazing series of consequences.
The diploma belonged to Johannes Kingsley Lewis. At that time graduating students were required to submit an essay and according to his diploma the subject of Kingsley’s essay was related to the history of medicine. I obtained a copy of the March 20, 1862 “Boston Medical and Surgical Journal” to discover several things, the first of which was that Dr. Lewis was the only historian in his class and the title of his paper was “A Review of the History of Medicine - glancing at its Advancement and some of its Defects as a Science” - coincidentally the exact same talk I’ve been giving for years.
Lewis’ two older brothers had joined the Union Army earlier but unfortunately both had been killed. Tragically Dr. Lewis followed them in service to the Union but three months later also lost his life. He was serving as a physician at the Battle of Corinth in Mississippi. That battle was illustrated in a Harpers Weekly Magazine.Condition
Overall Condition
GoodDate Examined
Aug 20, 2026Create Date
August 21, 2026Update Date
August 29, 2026
