A Peninsular War letter from Surgeon George James Guthrie, one of the great innovators and reformers of military surgery and medicine, and the subject of Michael Crumplin’s recently published Guthrie’s War: A Surgeon of the Peninsula & Waterloo, ink, four sides on a single folded sheet of white paper, including address panel to reverse centre of last sheet with a postal stamp, addressed to his wife, ‘Mrs. George Guthrie, No. 7 Lower James Street, Golden Square, London,’ dated at ‘Salamanca, August 17th 1812’, in which he discusses a range of topics following the battle of Salamanca, including the Army’s entry into Madrid - ‘It is the most fortunate thing this war and shows how much terror British gallantry has inspired ... the General is rapidly improving, walking out with my arm every evening for an hour or two and will in a fortnight or three weeks be able to exercise on horseback ... ’

holed and torn in places, content good and in generally good condition £200-300

George James Guthrie (1785-1856) was born in London of Scottish parents. Appointed Surgeon to the 29th Foot in March 1806, he was advanced to Staff Surgeon in January 1810 and became a Deputy Inspector of Hospitals in September 1813. His work in the Peninsula won the praise of the Duke of Wellington, in which conflict he attended casualties at Roleia, Vimiera, Talavera, Albuhera, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, Salamanca and Toulouse; in the Waterloo Campaign, at his own expense, he operated on casualties at Brussels.

At Salamanca, fought shortly before the above described letter was written:

‘Guthrie collected also 300 French wounded and cared for them, browbeating the Spanish authorities into providing facilities by threatening to leave a letter for the French, whom the Spaniards expected to return, telling the General to hang the inhabitants for their inhumanity. The action was repaid a year later when Guthrie was himself captured by French cavalry, commanded by one of those wounded who had been exchanged, and the French officer, recognising his saviour, immediately released Guthrie’ (Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, June 1961, paper by Colonel J. C. Watts, O.B.E., M.C., refers).

Such adventures are the subject of Michael Crumplin’s Guthrie’s War: A Surgeon of the Peninsula & Waterloo (Pen & Sword, 2010), a copy of which is included. For his own part, Guthrie’s principal work was On Gunshot Wounds of the Extremities Requiring the Different Operations of Amputations, and Their After Treatment (pubd. 1814), which ran to a sixth edition in 1855.

In 1824, Guthrie became a member of Council of the Royal College of Surgeons, of which he was three times President. He refused a knighthood offered by the Duke of York in 1826 on the grounds that he was too poor.