New York Hospital and Civil War: Valentine Mott

Valentine Mott was a renowned surgeon at New York Hospital from 1817 to 1837. After 1837 he was a consulting surgeon. He was born in 1785 in Glen Cove, Long Island. His father, Henry, was also a physician. He was a pupil of another New York Hospital surgeon, Valentine Seaman, and he received a medical degree from Columbia University in 1807. He received further medical training in London and Edinburgh.

In addition to New York Hospital, he was on the staff or faculty of Columbia College, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Rutgers Medical College, and the City of New York's Department of Surgery. In 1818 he performed a pioneer heart surgery on an axillary aneurism at New York Hospital. Another pioneer surgery which he performed during this time was a hip amputation.

During the Civil War, he was already an elderly man. He assisted in the war effort by serving as a consultant for the war department. He wrote a few articles for the U.S. Sanitary Commission on the use of anesthesia and methods for suppressing hemorrhages in gun wounds for their manual that was distributed to the surgeons. After hearing about the Lincoln's death, he collapsed and died a few weeks later.