RARE AND IMPORTANT REVOLUTIONARY WAR RELICS TO BE OFFERED IN DEDHAM Dedham, Mass. – Grogan and Company is honored to announce the October 16th auction of two Revolutionary War Medical Kits once belonging to Dr. John Warren, Boston, Massachusetts.
News-Antique.com - Aug 29,2011 - Dr. John Warren heard the cannon fire and saw the flames from the battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. As a surgeon with Colonel Pickering’s Colonial Regiment in Salem, Dr. John Warren left Salem for Charlestown to tend to the wounded, carrying with him a tool of his trade, an amputation kit. Warren knew that his older brother General Dr. Joseph Warren would be at Bunker Hill. However, upon his arrival in Medford, he learned that his brother was missing. Dr. Warren continued his journey to Cambridge, where for several days he made inquiries about his brother to soldiers that had survived the bloody battle. Although the accounts of what transpired on Breed’s Hill varied, the truth was that his brother had been shot and killed, with his body bayoneted and buried in a shallow trench. John Warren eventually went to Charlestown in search of his brother’s body, unfortunately, he was intercepted by a British sentry who bayoneted him in the side as a warning not to return.
Grogan and Company is honored to announce the upcoming sale of an Important Collection of 18th and 19th century Medical Kits, including two amputation kits and a Petit’s Tourniquet owned and used by Dr. John Warren during the Revolutionary War. The featured lot includes a fish skin covered amputation kit given to Dr. Warren by his brother, General Joseph Warren; a wooden amputation kit with a label noting Used during the Revolutionary War by Dr. John Warren; a Petit’s Tourniquet, a 19th century medical kit once belonging to Dr. John Collins Warren, and a 19th century Medical kit once belonging to Dr. Henry Bigelow of Boston. Dr. John Warren’s kits and tourniquet used during the Revolutionary War hail from a time before the importance of sterilization was known to doctors and show signs of heavy use, with the remains of dried layers of blood from the many patriots Dr. Warren operated on still evident over 200 years later. The condition of these kits acts as a time capsule and stark reminder of the pain and suffering our forefathers bore for our freedom.
Amputation kits were essential on the battlefield, as wounds were rarely superficial. One of the most common wounds was caused by musket ball fire and often resulted in limbs with shattered bones that could not be saved. In these cases, the surgeon would perform an amputation without anesthesia or sterilization. Only 35% of amputees survived after surgery, due to infections and unsanitary conditions. “When I look at these kits, I think of the young Dr. Warren having to perform amputation, after amputation on a multitude of young soldiers and what price these brave patriots paid for our country to gain it’s freedom,” remarked Allyson Lee, gallery manager of Grogan and Company, “It all becomes very real to me.” Very few Revolutionary War kits come to market, and even fewer in untouched condition with such a prominent provenance. The current auction record for a Revolutionary War relic is $12.3
