Barton Lisle Wright, M.D.

The father of Barton Wright was a Naval veteran of the Civil War and a native of Brooklyn, New York. Charles married a woman from Maryland in 1869 and Barton, their only child, was born the next year when the family lived in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, the boy only had ten years with his father before Charles lost a long battle with pneumonia at the Naval Hospital in 1880. He was buried here in what became the family’s plot.

Minerva “Minnie” Lloyd became Barton’s bride in Asbury Park, New Jersey on September 22, 1891. The birth of William Lloyd Wright quickly followed on December 2, 1891. The young father completed his studies for a medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1895.

Barton’s lifelong work was with the Navy. His sense of duty was first ignited when he joined the Pennsylvania National Guard in 1897. But it was the Navy calling to him as it did his father, so he enlisted as an assistant surgeon with the rating of Lieutenant. That was on June 13, 1898 in the middle of the short-lived Spanish-American War.

From a naval base in the Philippines in 1899, Barton served at a naval hospital in Yokohama, Japan in 1900 and 1901, followed by “sea service” after that assignment. That was followed by duty at Pensacola Naval Hospital. In 1906 he became Lieutenant Commander and one of two surgeons to open a new medical facility at what had been Fort Lyon, Colorado. 

The fort was located about 85 miles east of Pueblo in the town of Las Animas, and had recently been closed by the Army. Barton took part in a project to open a sanitarium there. The clean, dry air was considered beneficial in treating sailors and marines with tuberculosis. 

While there, Dr. Wright experimented with various treatments. Quite by accident he discovered that sufficient quantities of mercury injected into his patients had a profound and immediate effect. Newspapers across the country carried headlines like this after he published his findings in the Naval Medical Bulletin in 1908. 

The scientific community, however, was cautious, then dismissive after it was proven to result in more harm than benefit (chief of which was mercury poisoning). Modern medicine has concluded that TB disease is essentially curable with a course of treatment typically using four antibacterial medicines.

Lt. Commander Wright’s next stop was onboard the USS Nebraska, and by 1914 he was a surgeon at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. There was a brief tour on the USS Delaware until war was declared in April of 1917. That meant he was now needed to screen all the men who came through the Navy Recruiting Station in Boston for the rest of that year. While there his rating changed to Commander.

The next year and a half was spent at the Naval Training Station at Pelham Bay Park in New York City. Besides treating the mishaps and illnesses of the new recruits, Dr. Wright had to deal with the pandemic in late 1918. At that base alone, the influenza virus sickened 2399 sailors and caused 145 deaths.

The doctor received a letter of commendation for his tenure there as Senior Medical Officer. He had no way of knowing at the time, but two of the trainees there would later become Hollywood legends, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart.

In July of 1919 Barton returned to his hometown to work at the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. The 1920 census showed Barton living with his mother in a boarding house in the Fox Chase section of the city. Minnie’s residence at that time is unknown but she was listed with him in 1923 when he was at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. 

The chain of events in the early 1920s is complicated, with Barton having brief duty tours in Haiti, Cuba, and Panama. In 1923 his mother died and was buried beside her husband. In addition to grieving for her, his marriage broke apart.

When he settled into the recruiting office in Philadelphia around 1927 he married a woman named Ila May Fluck. She was 24 years younger, and three years younger than Barton’s son. She and her family were listed in the 1920 census just a few doors down the street from Barton, and that was no doubt how they first met.

The remainder of his years were spent at the Eastern Recruiting Station in the Marine Corps Quartermaster’s Depot. (Today, the historic building remains at 1100 South Broad Street, converted into apartments and condominiums.) By 1930 Barton commuted to work from a rental home he shared with Ila in Atlantic City. After a typical day on the job in late 1932 he relaxed on his usual train home but died that evening from a sudden heart attack.

His obituary said at the time that he was Chief Medical Examiner for the Marine Corps in the Philadelphia District and Senior Commander of the Navy Medical Corps. It also mentioned that his son, William, who retired from his own Naval career, came from California to attend the funeral. He died five years later in San Diego.