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William Clarence Braisted

American surgeon, Surgeon General of the United States Navy

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ29972118 ↗
Source-derived summary

William Clarence Braisted (9 October 1864 – 17 January 1941) was an American surgeon. He was born in Toledo, Ohio, died at home in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree in 1883 and from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons with a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1886. He was the Surgeon General of the United States Navy from 1914 to 1920 and the president of the American Medical Association from 1920 to 1921.

After completing his medical degree, Braisted interned at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He then practiced medicine in Detroit, Michigan from 1888 to 1890. Braisted joined the Navy as an assistant surgeon on 24 September 1890 and retired from active duty on 29 November 1920 after thirty years of service.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “William Clarence Braisted” is american surgeon, Surgeon General of the United States Navy. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through William, Clarence and Braisted, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1864, 1941, 1883, 1886—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1864-10-09. For this dossier, William, Clarence and Braisted is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american surgeon, Surgeon General of the United States Navy” 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 Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q29972118. VIAF identifies the subject as 73712924. The Library of Congress control number is nr91036865. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1864, 1941, 1883 and 1886.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “William Clarence Braisted” 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.