Benjamin Walter Taylor
Class of 1858

Benjamin Walter Taylor was born near Columbia, SC, on February 28, 1834. He was educated at Mt. Zion Institute and Southern Carolina College, and graduated from the Medical College of the State of South Carolina in 1858. He practiced in Columbia until the outbreak of the Civil War. Taylor enlisted as an assistant surgeon and then became Medical Director of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, the highest-ranking medical man in the Southern armies next to Dr. Hunter McGuire of Richmond, VA. After the war he resumed his practice of medicine and surgery in Columbia and became eminent in his surgical work. He was a member of local, state, and national medical associations. He served as president of the South Carolina Medical Association (1881), president of the State Board of Health and president of the Board of Regents of the State Hospital for the Insane. He contributed a number of articles to the Transactions of the South Carolina Medical Association and to The Southern Surgical and Gynecological Association. He died in 1905.

A History of Medicine in South Carolina 1825-1900. Joseph Ioor Waring, 1967.

John Pulaski Thomas, M.D.
Class of 1842

John Pulaski Thomas was born on February 6, 1818 in Union County, SC. He graduated from the Medical College of the State of South Carolina in 1842 and practiced as a country doctor in Union County. During the Civil War Dr. Thomas served the Confederacy as a surgeon. After the war, Dr. Thomas served in the South Carolina Legislature in the 57th session from November 1886 to December 24, 1887. He died in Charleston on February 23, 1900..

Image and biographical information courtesy of Martha Thomas Rudisill.

George Edward Trescot
Class of 1856

George Edward Trescot was born in Charleston, SC, on December 30, 1833. He attended the College of Charleston and graduated from the Medical College of the State of South Carolina in 1856. After serving as a house physician in Roper Hospital, he established a practice in Charleston, became quarantine master and physician of the lazaretto, professor of materia medica and therapeutics at the Medical College, and eventually dean of the faculty from 1869 to 1873. From 1858-1859 Trescot served as recording secretary for the South Carolina Medical Association. After 1873 he moved to Greenville where he was prominent in the medical activities of the town.

During the Civil War, Trescot served as surgeon with Lane’s South Carolina Brigade and was assistant surgeon general of South Carolina for a time. He died in 1890.

A History of Medicine in South Carolina 1825-1900. Joseph Ioor Waring, 1967.

Robert Wilson
Class of 1859

Robert Wilson, born in 1838, graduated from the Medical College of the State of South Carolina in 1859. He served as a surgeon in the Confederate Army, and after the war became an Episcopal minister. Wilson was the father of Dr. Robert Wilson, later dean of the Medical College.

A History of Medicine in South Carolina 1825-1900. Joseph Ioor Waring, 1967.

William T. Wragg
Class of 1830

William T. Wragg was born near Georgetown, SC, in 1807 and came to Charleston around 1819. He graduated from the South Carolina College in 1827 and then entered the practice of Dr. I. M. Campbell as a student and attended the Medical College of South Carolina for three years, graduating in 1830.

At this time Dr. John Edwards Holbrook (1794-1871) traveled to Paris and took along three young graduates to pursue their studies. These were Drs. James Postell Jervey (1808-1875), Thomas Lewis Ogier (1810-1900), and Wragg, who made the rounds of the hospital assiduously. His studies were interrupted briefly during the Revolution of July 1830, the “Three Glorious Days.” The casualties of this outbreak brought to him much valuable surgical experience.

Returning home, Wragg began a successful practice. He was one of the first to use the clinical thermometer in Charleston. He was active in the affairs of the Medical Society, of which he was at one time president (1849), and he taught surgery in the Southern School of Practical Medicine. His major contribution to the affairs of the Medical Society was in his successful handling of the Roper Hospital fund, which he managed to triple over the years, despite the financial difficulties of the Civil War.

Being much interested in the sanitation of the city, he contributed a number of articles to the medical literature. He wrote for the Medical Society a memoir of Dr. James Moultrie.

Wragg was a delegate to the National Medical Convention in 1848 and vice president of the American Medical Association in 1854. He died in 1885.

A History of Medicine in South Carolina 1825-1900. Joseph Ioor Waring, 1967.