Statues and commemorative tablets throughout the United States are visible and enduring testimonials to the valor and sacrifice of soldiers and sailors who fought in the Civil War. But there was another group, far less appreciated and honored and often maligned, whose contribution to the military effort was just as indispensable. They were the army physicians, in blue as well as in gray.

Never far behind the fighting front lines, often in the thick of battle itself, the physicians experienced all the horrors of war; they administered to the wounded, tended the diseased, and comforted the dying. Despite the appalling medical ignorance of the era judged by today's standards, Civil War doctors met the challenges they encountered with all the knowledge and skill they possessed. Although there were incompetent and charlatans in their ranks, most surgeons, according to the poet Walt Whitman who had ample opportunity to observe them, were "excellent men."

It is often forgotten that a considerable number of the doctors, like the soldiers, were of foreign birth. One of these foreign-born and trained physicians was a young man from Hungary named Rudolf Tauszky. A very talented individual, he rose to the pinnacle of his profession only to be struck down most cruelly by capricious fate in the prime of his life.

At least four other Hungarians served as doctors during the Civil War: Bernard Bettelheim, Ignatz Langer, Lazarus Schoney and Alexander Feckete. The Arad-born Dr. Langer was a distinguished veteran of the 1848-49 War of Liberation and one of the Hungarian pioneer settlers in Iowa. Dr. Feckete served as assistant surgeon of the 5th Regiment Cavalry, Missouri State Militia (originally organized as the 13th Regiment Cavalry, Missouri State Militia) until his discharge on April 13, 1865. A native of Pest, Dr. Schoney came to the United States in 1860 and served in the Union army from 1862 to 1865. While chief contract surgeon, with offices at the Senate chamber, he was befriended by President Abraham Lincoln. As a Protestant missionary on the island of Okinawa, Dr. Bettelheim rendered valuable aid to Commodore Matthew C. Perry's expedition, which in 1854 opened up Japan to the Western world. Subsequently, he moved to the United States. On April 16, 1863, he enlisted as surgeon, with the rank of major, in the 106th Illinois Infantry and remained with the regiment until his resignation on June 9th of the following year.

Dr. Tauszky was born in Pest. He grew up during very trying times; the 1848-49 War of Liberation against the ruling Hapsburg dynasty left much of the country in ruins. When the revolutionary movement was suppressed with the aid of a huge Russian army dispatched by Czar Nicholas I, Hapsburg absolutism descended with a furious vengeance. Hundreds of patriots were executed, thousands were imprisoned and had their property confiscated, and many were forced into exile.

Dr. Tauszky received his medical education at the University of Pest. One of his teachers was the eminent Dr. Ignác Semmelweis (1818-1865), who discovered the cause of puerperal, or childbed, fever, an often fatal septicemia, and introduced antisepsis into medical practice. Semmelweis served on the staff of St. Rókus Hospital in Pest from 1850 to 1856 and became professor of obstetrics at the university in 1855. He not only taught his technique of antisepsis to countless students, but also performed major surgery under antiseptic conditions more than a decade before the highly publicized demonstrations of Joseph Lister in Great Britain.

Recalling his early student days in a paper read before the New York Academy of Medicine in 1882, Dr. Tauszky said: "My own experience in the art and science of obstetrics, extending now over a period of more than a quarter of a century, obtained as early as 1855, in the lying-in-wards of the University of Pest, in Hungary, under the late Prof. Semmelweis, and having been quite extensive, I deem it in the interest of science to publish it,."

After obtaining his medical degree in 1861, Dr. Tauszky moved to Italy and enrolled in the Hungarian Legion, becoming a staff physician with the rank of captain. This legion was formed by Hungarian exiles from European countries, the Near East and the United States in August 1860 shortly after Giuseppe Garibaldi's successful invasion of Sicily. The legion fought with Garibaldi's army until the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples was completed. Upon the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy the legion was incorporated as a distinct unit into the new Italian army. Until its disbandment in 1867, the legion served mainly as a rural paramilitary force in southern Italy, fighting bandits and elements hostile to the regime of King Victor Emmanuel II. One of the principal nemeses of the legion during these years was Carmine Crocco Donatelli, perhaps the most ruthless outlaw chief in modern Italian history.

The Civil War attracted many Europeans, especially those with a military background, to the United States. Among them was Dr. Tauszky. He was appointed assistant surgeon of volunteers with rank of first-lieutenant on September 24, 1863. He served as a hospital surgeon in Washington, D. C. and also performed medical duties in the field. When he applied for appointment as a regimental surgeon and was offered only a position as assistant surgeon in the 1st Colored Infantry, he brusquely declined.

The war quickly transformed the city into a gigantic armed camp. Within the District of Columbia there were about forty forts, making a complete circle around the capital, their guns being trained to sweep every road or possible route leading into the city. The streets swarmed with soldiers, prostitutes, runaway slaves, lobbyists, and contractors eager to profit from the war.

Washington was not only a city of barracks but also of hospitals. There were some fifty military hospitals and convalescent camps in the city and the surrounding suburbs. Some of the hospitals were in churches, public halls and government office buildings. One of the most unique hospitals was that organized in the museum of the Patent Office, where each alcove was turned into a ward. Vivid descriptions of the conditions and daily routine in these hospitals appear in the memoirs, diaries and letters of doctors, nurses, patients and visitors. Shortly after being honorably mustered out of service on July 27, 1865, Dr. Tauszky returned to Europe and spent about a year making a special study of women's diseases in the hospitals of Vienna. Upon coming back to the United States, he joined the regular army and was sent to the Western frontier and New Mexico.

In 1868, Dr. Tauszky settled in New York City and quickly built up a respected and thriving practice. Unlike many Hungarian immigrants of this era who came alone to the United States, he had the company of several family members: his father and two sisters, both married.

Post-war New York was a rich metropolis - the commercial, banking and artistic capital of the American continent. It produced more manufactured goods than any other city in America and was home to the main offices of fast growing corporations. But much of New York's wealth was pure facade. Many residents lived in abject poverty, eking out a marginal existence.

Dr. Tauszky's reputation and prominence in medical circles earned him an appointment to the city's Board of Health. The fledgling Board of Health was confronted with a multitude of formidable problems, but none was greater or more urgent than the abominable housing conditions of the city's poor. More than half the population lived in overcrowded tenements, and some 25,000 people occupied the deep and dismal cellars of these same buildings.

Like others endowed with a deep-seated sense of justice, Dr. Tauszky threw himself wholeheartedly into improving the lot of his less fortunate fellow citizens. He lectured and wrote tirelessly on sanitary reforms, making numerous recommendations for improving housing and health care. One of his most cherished projects was a system of free warm baths for winter. Even though the proposal had the endorsement of several prominent citizens, the politicians, always reluctant to spend on the poor, turned it down.

In 1876, Dr. Tauszky joined Mount Sinai Hospital. The first Jewish hospital in the United States, it was organized in 1852 as the Jews' Hospital. In 1866 the institution's name was changed to Mount Sinai Hospital to emphasize that it served the community without distinction of race or religion. As an attending physician and surgeon, Dr. Tauszky served in the Out-Patient Department and was in charge of one of the gynecology clinics. He remained affiliated with the hospital until his resignation in 1884.

Dr. Tauszky's colleagues included some of the most notable figures in American medical history: Dr. Abraham Jacobi, who did more than any other physician in the United States to make pediatrics a specialty, first president of the American Pediatric Association, and a founding member of the German Hospital (now Lenox Hill Hospital); his wife, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi, probably the most highly respected woman physician of her generation and a staunch feminist and supporter of women's suffrage; Dr. Edward Gamaliel Janeway, regarded as one of the foremost diagnosticians of his time and a statesman of tuberculosis control in New York City and the nation; and Dr. Israel Moses, a veteran of the Mexican War as well as the Civil War and one of the founders of the American Public Health Association, an organization that has played a most conspicuous role in the modernization of the nation's medicine and public health. Another outstanding physician on staff was a fellow Hungarian, Dr. Árpád Gerster (1848-1923), brother of world-renowned opera singer Etelka Gerster and nephew of Civil War captain Anton Gerster. Like Dr. Tauszky, Dr. Gerster was educated in Pest and Vienna. He came to the United States in 1873. Appointed attending surgeon to Mount Sinai in 1879, he remained affiliated with the hospital until January 1, 1914. A pioneer in modern surgical technique, Dr. Gerster was not only a brilliant surgeon but also a superior diagnostician and a gifted teacher. His pupils included the Mayo brothers, William J. and Charles H., of Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Gerster's epoch-making book The Rules of Aseptic and Antiseptic Surgery (1887) passed through three editions in two years.

Like his colleagues, Dr. Tauszky often delivered lectures at various professional meetings and contributed regularly to medical journals. The Index Medicus cites more than a dozen publications authored by him between 1879 and 1884.

Dr. Tauszky was a permanent member of the American Medical Association from 1876 and a member of the New York County section of the Medical Society of the State of New York. According to the Transactions of the Society for the years 1871 and 1872, he resided at 325 West 50th Street.

He also held membership in the Medico-Legal Society of New York, an organization composed of scientists, lawyers and physicians and devoted to the science of medical jurisprudence. He served on the Society's Committee on Translations in 1883 as well as in 1884. Others on the Committee included Judge Philip J. Joachimsen, who was brevetted brigadier-general during the Civil War; Dr. Mark Blumenthal, renowned for his work with the deaf; and Judge M. S. Isaacs, one of the founders of Montefiore Hospital.

Around 1880, by which time he was living at 211 East 77th Street, Dr. Tauszky became very interested in matters pertaining to mental health, and spent much of his time in the study and cure of diseases afflicting the mind. He soon became an acknowledged authority in this field and was frequently asked to give expert testimony in civil and criminal court cases. He was the star expert witness in the litigations surrounding Miss Mary Irene Hoyt, one of the most famous will cases of the early 1880s.

In 1883 Dr. Tauszky married, taking as his wife a young lady by the name of Frances Rosenthal. It was a very ill-conceived union. He was nearly fifty; she was barely twenty. She was also frivolous and egocentric, unable to comprehend her husband's serious nature and devotion to his profession. Moreover, according to those who knew them, she constantly objected to his smoking in the house. Domestic life in the Tauszky household was not a harmonious one; bickering and arguments were the daily fare.

They resided initially at 171 East 70th Street. Later on they relocated to the Ashton apartments on the corner of 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue, close to Mount Sinai Hospital, which at that time extended from 66th to 67th Street on Lexington Avenue.

The end of 1884 found Dr. Tauszky despondent and beset by troubles. His marital difficulties left him depressed, while the long hours of work drained him physically. Weighing most heavily on his mind, however, was the death of his father.

On Saturday, January 3, 1885, Dr. Tauszky had lunch with one of his sisters. He was rather melancholy, but, under the circumstances, that was understandable. There was nothing in his conduct to suggest the terrible chain of events about to unfold. Afterwards he made his usual round of calls. Returning home late at night, he closeted himself briefly in his study and then summoned his wife. When she appeared, he shot her in the head. The bullet grazed her scalp, leaving a slight but bloody trail. Turning the gun on himself, he pulled the trigger again. The bullet entered the middle of his forehead and came out near the left temple. His wound, like that of his wife, was superficial.

Alarmed neighbors called the police and Dr. Tauszky was taken into custody. According to the newspaper reports of the following day, the policemen found him incoherent and in such a state of agitation that he had to be restrained. "Probably driven crazy by trouble," opined one of the correspondents. Needless to say, relatives, friends and colleagues were shocked and dismayed when they heard the terrible news.

Brother-in-law Max Danziger acted as spokesman for the family during the ensuing court proceedings. Many people spoke out on behalf of Dr. Tauszky, among them Professor Felix Adler, noted civic reformer and social welfare leader. In his defense, they cited his outstanding accomplishments in medicine, his genuine concern for the public good, his philanthropic spirit, his depression over his father's death, and the emotional strains of his troubled marriage. Everyone pleaded for understanding and compassion.

The court concurred with Dr. Tauszky's supporters and declared that he was not responsible for his actions on account of his mental state. He was committed to Bloomingdale Asylum on Morningside Heights, located on the grounds now occupied by the campus of Columbia University. He remained confined there until his death on November 21, 1889.

References:
Passing mentions of Dr. Tauszky appear in several Hungarian publications. His service with the Hungarian Legion in Italy is summarized in Károly Mária Kertbeny's German language book Alfabetische Namensliste Ungarischer Emigration, 1848-1864 [Alphabetical Name List of Hungarian Emigration, 1848-1864], published in 1864 in Brussels, Belgium. A capsule history of his service in the Union army during the Civil War is given in Francis B. Heitman's Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army as well as in Frederick Phisterer's New York in the War of the Rebellion. His tragic demise is described in a series of articles printed in the New York Times during January of 1885. These articles also contain brief biographical details. His obituary notice in the November 24, 1889 issue of the New York Times and in the December 5, 1889 issue of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal recapitulate his career and sad end. Information about his residences and professional affiliations were gleaned from medical journals of his time. Details regarding Dr. Tauszky's tenure at Mount Sinai Hospital were provided by Barbara N. Niss, archivist.