Dr. Thomas Wiltberger Evans

 

In his influential position---as dentist to much of Europe's royalty---Dr. Evans did much to promote the practical lessons of the U.S. Sanitary Commission at a time when the idealistic "Red Cross" movement had produced the Geneva Convention of 1864.

His personal collection of Sanitary Commission matériel---on display in Paris at the Universal Exposition of 1867---formed the basis for the American Ambulance set up across from Dr. Evans' home during the Siege of Paris (1870-71).

At the end of his life, Dr. Evans became an "elder statesman" of the little American Colony of Paris and lent his weight to a movement to make it possible for foreign students to get credit for studies at the Sorbonne University.

 

Gerald Carson. The Dentist and the Empress, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1983.

"As a student of what had been accomplished in delivering health services in the American Civil War, Dr. Evans often talked with the Emperor Napoleon, and especially with the Empress Eugénie, about his theories and observations."

 

Alan Albright. "Thomas W. Evans: A Philadelphian "Yankee" at the Court of Napoleon III." Blérancourt Exhibition Catalog, 1993.

"Thomas Wiltberger Evans had been a bigger-than-life hero, a practical-minded Philadelphia boy who had made out so well in a fairy-tale world that he could hardly believe it himself. "

 

Alan Albright. "American Volunteerism in France. The Development of Relief Work, in and out of War." Blérancourt Exhibition Catalog, 1993.

"Evans, as Henry Dunant, had witnessed the sufferings of the innumerable wounded of the battle of Solferino and had naturally joined with the European elite (many of them his clients) in promoting the International Societies for Assistance to Wounded Soldiers, launched by Dunant and recognized by the Geneva Convention of 1864. In a book he published in French in Paris in 1866, Evans described the activities of the Sanitary Commission, which had come to the aid of the wounded of the Civil War (1861-1865)."

 

Thomas W. Evans wrote:

• Les Institutions sanitaires pendant le Conflit Austro-prusso-italien, Paris: Masson, 1867.
• Voitures et Tentes d'Ambulance, Paris: Paul Dupont, 1867.
• Report on Instruments and Apparatus of Medicine, Surgery and Hygiene, Paris Universal Exposition, 1867. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1868.
• Commission Sanitaire des Etats-Unis, Paris: Dentu, 1867.
• History of the American Ambulance Established in Paris during the Siege of 1870-71, London: Low, Low and Searle, 1873.
• The Second French Empire, New York: Appleton, 1905.