Benjamin Church (physician)

Benjamin Church, born in Newport in the Colony of Rhode Island in 1734, was a Boston physician and surgeon who became effectively the first Surgeon General of the United States Army. He graduated from Harvard College in 1754, studied medicine with Joseph Pynchon and continued his training in London, then built a reputation in Boston as a talented physician and a skillful surgeon who performed cataract operations and treated the eyes of John Adams. A vigorous Whig writer and orator, he examined the body of Crispus Attucks after the Boston Massacre and served on the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. In July 1775 the Continental Congress made him Chief Physician and Director General of its new Medical Service, but an intercepted cipher letter to the British showed he had been communicating with the enemy. A court martial convicted him, he was jailed and later released, and he is believed to have been lost at sea in the Caribbean in 1778.