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Frederick Detrick

United States Army physician, flight surgeon and pilot (1889-1931)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ5497651
Source-derived summary

Frederick Louis Detrick (April 21, 1889 in New Market, Maryland – June 3, 1931 in Baltimore, Maryland), was a U.S. Army physician, flight surgeon and pilot. He is the namesake of Fort Detrick, Maryland (formerly, Detrick Field and Camp Detrick). Detrick, who was a teaching surgeon on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, served in France during World War I, and was a member of the Maryland National Guard when he died of a heart attack in 1931.

Biography

Although born in Frederick County, Maryland, where his family had lived for five generations, Detrick lived a portion of his childhood in Orange, Virginia, where his grandfather owned Montpelier, President James Madison's former home. He graduated from the Rockefeller Institute and completed his medical internship at Bellevue Hospital, both in New York City. He was appointed a lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Corps, U.S. Army in April 1918. His first brief assignment was to the installation hospital at Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, followed by a tour of duty with the 28th Aero Squadron, 3rd Pursuit Group in France. He supported the major American offensives at the battles of Saint-Mihiel and of Meuse/Argonne. He was discharged at Camp Dix, New Jersey, in July 1919.

Detrick returned to Baltimore and opened a private practice on Linden Avenue, eventually earning a teaching position on the staff and faculty of Johns Hopkins University Hospital.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Frederick Detrick” is united States Army physician, flight surgeon and pilot (1889-1931). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Frederick, Detrick and United, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1889, 1931, 1918, 1919—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1889-04-21. For this dossier, Frederick, Detrick and United is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “united States Army physician, flight surgeon and pilot (1889-1931)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5497651. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1889, 1931, 1918 and 1919.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Frederick Detrick”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Frederick Detrick primary sources, Frederick Detrick archive and Frederick research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Frederick Detrick” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.