Delegate John M. Bernhisel, Salt Lake Physician Following the Civil War BY G L E N BARRETT
John M. Bernhisel. USHS collections.
Pennsylvania, in 1799, John M. Bernhisel, the "first university-trained physician to embrace Mormonism," received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1827. Joining the Mormons ten years later, following a rather extensive correspondence with Joseph Smith from his office in New York City, Bernhisel became Smith's personal attache and family physician, living in the prophet's Mansion House in Nauvoo, Illinois. After the Mormon exodus of 1846 led to the settlement of the Salt Lake Valley, Bernhisel doctored those suffering from gunshot wounds and accidents while en route to the Great Basin country. But a new career was soon to replace doctoring, for he was sent to Washington, D . C , initially to seek territorial status, then statehood, for what Brigham Young preferred to call Deseret. B O R N NEAR LOYSVILLE, CUMBERLAND COUNTY,
D r . Barrett is professor of history at Boise State University.
