U.S. Naval Surgeon
At the age of 23, Barton chose to enter the U.S. Navy as a surgeon. He received his commission on April 10, 1809, and less than week later commissioned the famous Thomas Sully to paint his portrait for a sum of $50. This painting, now in the Wilstach Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, shows a young Barton in uniform – a blue coat with gold braid, and hands gloved. Barton wrote, “I was overwhelmed with the difficulties I had to encounter in the performance of professional duties, where every species of inconvenience and disadvantage that can be imagined was opposed to the exertions of the surgeon.” Ultimately, Barton was not one to accept inadequacies, but rather to fight for reform.
Barton fought to tighten the controls of shipboard medical supplies. He called for the introduction of lemons and limes aboard Navy ships long before the U.S. Navy accepted the importance of an antiscorbutic treatment for vitamin C deficiency or scurvy. Barton went as far as to send a bottle of lime juice to the Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton with the instructions to drink it in the form of lemonade. His outspoken manner angered many of his colleagues. Barton, of necessity, became familiar with the administration of hospitals.
In February, 1811, Congress passed an act establishing naval hospitals. Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton later asked Barton to compose a set of regulations for governing these hospitals. Barton was well aware of the shortcomings in Navy medical care. Shipboard facilities were primitive, and there were no permanent hospitals ashore, only temporary facilities in Navy yards.
Barton began by drafting rules for governing naval hospitals. In 1812, the Navy Department submitted them to Congress. "Each hospital accommodating at least one hundred men should maintain a staff including a surgeon, who must be a college or university graduate; two surgeon's mates; a steward; a matron; a wardmaster; four permanent nurses; and a variety of servants." Not satisfied with the hastily drafted suggestions, Barton expanded his theories in a treatise published in 1814.
He was the first to promote the idea of employing female nurses in the U.S. Navy. He described the "matron's characteristics: she should be "discreet ... reputable ... capable ... neat, cleanly, and tidy in her dress, and urbane and tender in her deportment." She would supervise the nurses and other attendants as well as those working in the laundry, larder, and kitchen, but her main function was to ensure that patients were clean, well-fed, and comfortable.
By 1824, Barton served on the first board to examine candidates for the Navy's medical service. The intent of the board was to examine Surgeon's Mates, "preparatory to their promotion to the rank of Surgeons." The board was also authorized to examine applicants for Commissions as Surgeons' Mates and report upon their fitness.
In 1830 he became the commanding officer at Naval Hospital Norfolk, VA. He was involved in the development of the Philadelphia Naval Hospital when it was located in the Naval Asylum. Today, this gothic structure, that also served as the first home of the U.S. Naval Academy, stands in Grays Ferry.
President John Tyler appointed Barton to the office of first head of the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery on September 2, 1842. (The post of Navy Surgeon General was created in March 1871). His time as Chief clerk was active, but short. Among his recommendations were the adoption of a supply table so that drugs and medical supplies could be properly procured and accounted for; the abolition of a venereal fee; uniform standards for recruits; higher professional standards for Navy physicians; standardizations and administrations of naval hospitals; and strict control over the use of liquor on board ships. He was a vehement prohibitionist, and had a “liquor circular” pasted on boxes of whisky identifying the contents as medical supplies which required stringent accounting, a step which was not popular in the fleet.
