The End of the Harvard Service

The Harvard University Service worked at the American Ambulance through the first of July, when it was succeeded by a group from the University of Pennsylvania.  Most of the Harvard personnel departed on the Rochambeau, returning to Boston on July 13.

Though the Service's time in France was brief, its medical and surgical personnel learned a great deal which would serve them in the coming years.  Drawing on their experience at Neuilly, members of the Harvard Service published articles on gunshot wounds, bacteriology, orthopedics, and neurological surgery in issues of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal in 1915 and 1916.  Robert B. Greenough submitted an overall report on the Service’s work at the American Ambulance, analyzing and classifying its 441 cases—many of them facial, dental, or jaw injuries as a result of trench warfare—and then deposited copies of all the Service’s records and photographs with the Medical School’s library and contributed examples of bullets and shell fragments to Harvard's Warren Anatomical Museum.