WAR DEPARTMENT, 
SURGEON GENERAL’S OFFICE, 
Washington, D. C., August 20, 1884. 
In announcing to the Officers of the Medical Department 
the death of Joseph Janvier Woodward, Surgeon and Brevet 
Lieutenant Colonel, U. S. Army, which occurred near Phila- 
delphia, Pa., August 17, 1884, the Surgeon General wishes 
to offer his tribute of respect to the memory of the deceased, 
whose distinguished career and valuable services, for a period 
of twenty-three years, have shed lustre on the Corps, and 
for whose untimely loss feelings of profound regret will be 
shared alike by his comrades in arms and by the profes- 
sion at large. 
Doctor Woodward was born in Philadelphia, Pa., October 
30, 1833, and was educated at the Central High School of 
that city, graduating with honor as Bachelor of Arts in 1850, 
and receiving the degree of Master of Arts from the same 
institution in 1855. 
He graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylva- 
nia, April, 1853; entered the Army as Assistant Surgeon, 
August 5, 1861; became Captain and Assistant Surgeon, 
July 28, 1866; Major and Surgeon, June 26, 1876. “For 
faithful and meritorious services during the War” he received 
the brevets of Captain, Major, and Lieutenant Colonel, 
U. S. Army. 
He was assigned to duty in this Office May 19, 1862, and 
from that date until the beginning of the illness which ter- 
minated in his death was intimately identified with its 
professional and scientific work. 
While the valuable results of his life’s labor are compre- 
hended in a long list of miscellaneous publications, both profes- sional and scientific, too familiar to the Corps to require 
individual mention, his greatest triumphs were won in the 
field of microscopical investigation in normal and patho- 
logical histology, and in his happy application of photo- 
micrography to the purposes of science. In these pursuits 
he attained remarkable success, and achieved an enviable, 
world-wide reputation, leaving to science and medicine 
lessons of undoubted value and usefulness. Of his strictly 
professional work the medical portion of the Medical and 
Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion was the 
crowning achievement.' In the second part of this work 
he developed the results of his careful investigations into the 
nature and pathology of the intestinal diseases which had 
proved so fatal in the late War. Here also he displayed his 
wonderful capacity for that minute and exhaustive research 
which forms so striking a feature of his writings. 
As in the case of his co-laborer, Otis, he yields to other 
hands the honor of completing his labors. 
In addition to his engrossing professional duties, his restless 
activity of mind led him to seek recreation in his favorite 
studies, Physics, Art and Philosophy. 
Endowed with a retentive memory and of untiring in- 
dustry, he acquired a vast store of information which he held 
available for use at will; fluent of speech, he took delight in 
the expression of his views and opinions both in social 
converse and in the arena of scientific debate. 
His fund of knowledge, his strong convictions, his tenacity 
of opinion and his quick perception made him a controversialist 
of no low order. 
With such a record, it is needless to speak of his zeal, his 
ambition or his devotion to his profession, and especially to 
the reputation of the corps of which he was so bright an 
ornament. 
Of a sensitive, highly strung, nervous organization, the con- 
finement, anxiety and labor to which he was subjected in his 
attendance upon the late President Garfield during his long illness, proved too much for a mind and body already over- 
strained by incessant labor, and precipitated the illness which 
finally terminated his life. 
At the time of his death, Dr. Woodward was a member 
and Ex-President of the American Medical Association, a 
member and Ex-President of the Washington Philosophical 
Society, a member of the National Academy of Science, of the 
Association for the advancement of Science, of the Academy 
of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and of the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons of Philadelphia. He was an hono- 
rary member of several American and foreign scientific, med- 
ical and microscopical societies, and the recipient of many 
distinguished honors from learned bodies in this country and 
abroad. 
Surgeon General, U. S. Army.