John Warren (surgeon)

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Dr. John Warren (1753–1815) was a Continental Army surgeon during the American Revolutionary War and the younger brother of Dr. Joseph Warren.

Warren was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts and studied at The Roxbury Latin School and medicine under his elder brother Joseph, later becoming a renowned doctor in Boston. He joined Colonel Pickering's Regiment in 1773 as an army surgeon. On June 17, 1775, he was in Cambridge tending to the wounded coming in from the Battle of Bunker Hill on Breed's Hill over four miles away. Worried about his brother, who had joined the fighting and died, Warren went to search for him after the battle was over. A British sentry told John he could not pass and then bayoneted him as a warning, forcing the depressed Warren to go back to Cambridge.

After his brother's death, Warren volunteered for service and was made a senior surgeon at the hospital in Cambridge. He became surgeon of the general hospital on Long Island in 1776 during General Washington's defense there. He also served at the Battle of Trenton and the Battle of Princeton.

Warren returned to Boston in 1777 to continue his medical practices while still serving as a military surgeon in the army hospital there. He became very successful for years after, performing one of the first abdominal operations in America and founding Harvard Medical School. He was a character in Esther Forbes' 1943 novel Johnny Tremain.