The collection is open for research.
Permission to publish material from Thomas Henry Howard Manuscript Account Book must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Thomas Henry Howard Manuscript Account Book , Ms2019-007, Special Collections, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.
The Thomas Henry Howard Manuscript Account Book was purchased by Special Collections in 2018.
The processing, arrangement, and description of the Thomas Henry Howard Manuscript Account Book was completed in February 2019.
The Thomas Henry Howard Manuscript Account Book is filled with names of patients and the services performed and the payment received for each entry before, during, and after the Civil War. Dr. Howard's entries include the names of his patients, date of services and fees charged together with short descriptions of medical services rendered. Services included visits and medicines, "cupping", "strenthening plaster", dressing wounds, attending pregnant women - "attending wife in parturition", delivery of children "Tending wife in childbirth", Tobacco, and cutting gums. Medical treatment was also administered to local slaves as when Dr. Howard charged Fleming Howery $2.00 "For medical attendance on Negroe child of James Ferguson estate". Post-war African-American patients are noted by the addition of the word "colored" in parenthesis after their names.
The native born Virginian Dr. Thomas Henry Howard (1834-1910) graduated in March 1861 from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and save for his wartime service as a Confederate surgeon, he practiced exclusively in Floyd County, Virginia. His wartime service included acting assistant surgeon in Lynchburg hospitals in 1862, assistant surgeon with the 14th Va. Infantry in 1863, and acting assistant surgeon with the 30th Virginia Infantry in 1864. He was likely married to Fanny Irene Johnston in 1874.