When the Civil War began, he helped recruit a troop of militia and was commissioned as a lieutenant. He was appointed to the
Medical Corps on September 19, 1861, and served for the duration of the war. He was medical inspector for the
Army of the James from 1864 to 1865, and was
breveted lieutenant-colonel in March 1865. After the war ended, he was assigned to the
Army Medical Museum in
Washington, D.C., where he prepared the "Surgical Section" of the
Catalogue of the United States Army Medical Museum in 1866. In 1868, he published
A Medical Report upon the Uniform and Clothing of the Soldiers of the United States Army. On December 15, 1868, he married Margaret Ellicott from
Baltimore, Maryland. He was a member of the
Surgeon-General's office. In 1875 and 1876, he wrote papers advocating the use of sub-emetic doses of
ipecacuanha in the treatment of
dysentery. His duties included instruction in military hygiene at the Infantry and Cavalry School at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from 1886 to 1890 and command of the Army and Navy Hospital at
Hot Springs, Arkansas, from 1892 to 1895. In 1881, he wrote
Quarter Century Report of the Class of 1856 of the College of New Jersey. He was awarded the gold medal of the Military Service Institution for his paper on "The Enlisted Soldier," which was published in its Journal for March 1887. In 1891, he travelled to England to study the British Army's medical care and published a report in 1894. In 1895, he was appointed medical inspector of the Department of the Colorado. In 1899, he became chief surgeon of the Department of the Pacific at Manila. He wrote
Provisional Manual for Exercise of Company Bearers and Hospital Corp in 1889, and
Notes on Military Hygiene for Officers of the Line. He was retired in 1901 and, in 1904, he was promoted to brigadier-general on the retired list. ==After retirement from the U. S. Army==