Joseph Barnes (American physician)

Joseph K. Barnes (1817 to 1883) was an American army doctor who served as the twelfth Surgeon General of the United States Army from 1864 to 1882. Born in Philadelphia, he took his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1838 and was commissioned an assistant surgeon in 1840, serving in the Seminole wars in Florida, in the Mexican-American War and at many frontier posts. During the Civil War he rose from medical director in the western departments to acting Surgeon General in 1863 and Surgeon General in 1864, with a brevet as major general the next year. He attended Abraham Lincoln on his deathbed in April 1865 and oversaw the autopsy, and in 1881 was one of the surgeons treating the dying James Garfield. Under him the Army Medical Museum and Library grew and the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion was largely completed. He retired in 1882 and died the next year in Washington.