Historians disagree as to whether the Union Army used branding as a punishment for desertion, which means that the story may be fabricated.

There is an unverified story of Minor also being given the task of punishing an Irish soldier in the Union Army by branding him on the face with a D for ' deserter' and that this incident later played a role in Minor's delusions. He was accepted by the Union Army as a surgeon and may have served at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864, which was notable for the terrible casualties suffered by both sides. After a brief stint at Knight General Hospital in New Haven he joined the Union Army. Minor graduated in 1863 with a medical degree and a specialization in comparative anatomy. He subsequently enrolled at the Yale School of Medicine, supporting himself during his years as a medical student with part-time employment as an instructor at the Russell Academy and as an assistant on the 1864 revision of Webster's Dictionary, then in preparation at Yale under the supervision of Noah Porter. At age 14, he was sent to the United States, where he lived with relatives in New Haven while attending Russell Military Academy. He had numerous half-siblings, among them Thomas T. His parents were Congregational church missionaries from New England. Minor was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the son of Eastman Strong Minor and his first wife, Lucy Bailey. Minor was hospitalized in Connecticut, where he died in 1920. In 1910, responding to protests about Minor's treatment, Winston Churchill, then British home secretary, ordered Minor deported to the United States.

He was one of the project's most effective volunteers, reading through his large personal library of antiquarian books and compiling quotations that illustrated how particular words were used. While incarcerated, Minor became an important contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary. Affected by delusions, he shot a man who he believed had broken into his room, and was consequently committed from 1872 to 1910 to a secure British psychiatric hospital. Minor 22 June 1834 – 26 March 1920), was an American army surgeon, psychiatric-hospital patient, and lexicographical researcher.Īfter serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War, Minor moved to England.

Contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary

The surgeon of crowthorne book