Carl Miller Sneed

Bio and photo courtesy of Andrew Pestle

Carl Miller Sneed was born into a rural farming family in Santa Fe, Missouri, on January 14th, 1877. He became an accomplished student during his youth and enrolled in the medical school at the University of Missouri in about 1897. Carl graduated in 1901 and soon began practicing as an oculist and aurist throughout mid-Missouri. Dr. Sneed also taught in the Medical Department at the University of Missouri for a short period, but it appears that his time as a professor was short-lived.

Dr. Sneed soon became well known as a specialist in ophthalmology, rhinology, and otolaryngology (what we would generally consider an ENT physician today, also called an Otorhinolaryngologist). At the outbreak of war, he chose to volunteer his services in the US Army, and subsequently received a Captain's commission in the Medical Reserve Corps on May 16th, 1918. Dr. Sneed was assigned to the staff of Base Hospital #114 and traveled overseas to France aboard the USS Manchuria on June 7th.

Following their debarkation at St. Nazaire, Base Hospital #114 served at Bordeaux as a part of a larger American hospital center within the port city. As AEF casualties continued to increase in the final months of WW1, the hospital's capacity eventually grew to 5400 beds. The patients treated at Base Hospital #114 were described as requiring frequent dressing changes and constant attention by the medical staff. The facility would treat more than 17,000 soldiers by the time of its dissolvement in 1919.

However, newspaper articles from that period show that Dr. Sneed actually served at several AEF hospitals in France during the conflict, and that he was actively engaged during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and within the Toul, Chateau-Thierry, and St. Mihiel Sectors. He wrote back home that at one hospital there were 35,000 severely wounded men being treated, and that on one morning he witnessed 71 doughboys being buried in a trench who had died of their wounds the night before. With this information, it becomes immediately clear that Dr. Sneed was engaged in the care of mass casualties in the final bloody months of the First World War.

Captain Sneed was recommended for a promotion to Major while overseas, but this was deferred following the November Armistice. He returned to the United States in February of 1919, and this photograph originates from the Parsons Photography Studio in Columbia, MO, probably just days after he arrived home. He soon returned to his medical practice and married later that year. The couple would later have two children.

Dr. Sneed also worked at the Boone County Hospital, as a consulting physician for the Missouri Commision for the Blind, and as a surgeon for the MKT Railroad. He was also active in the Masonic Lodge, served as the President of the Boone County Medical Association in 1921, was the county chairman of the Red Cross in 1924, and helped reorganize the Veterans of Foreign War post in Columbia in 1932. Dr. Sneed thankfully lived long enough to see his son safely return from WW2, but he became increasingly ill with heart disease during the Fall of 1946. He died at the age of 69 years on November 6th and was buried with family in the Centralia Cemetery of Centralia, MO.

Carl Miller Sneed MD (1877-1946) - Find a Grave Memorial