Dr. Ira Russell (1815-1888) was a Union Army surgeon stationed in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in late 1862 and early 1863. A New Hampshire native, Russell received his education at Dartmouth and the University of New York, graduating with an M.D. from the latter in 1844. Also in that year, he married Rowena Greenwood, and the couple afterward made their home in Winchendon and Natick, Massachusetts. They had at least three children prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, Fred, Jennie, and Erwin. In 1861, Russell was commissioned surgeon of the Eleventh Massachusetts Volunteers but was eventually assigned duty west of the Mississippi, first at St. Louis, and later, in December 1862, at Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he assumed the directorship of the hospitals of the Army of the Frontier. Russell may have viewed his war service as a medical study rather than a military duty because he took his two sons, Fred and Erwin, along with him to Fayetteville. Fred Russell served as a clerk for his father, and four of the five items in this collection were written by him. Fred and Erwin may have been with their father serving medical apprenticeships at this time as well. After the war, Russell returned to Massachusetts and civilian practice. He published several medical papers in the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion and other medical journals in the latter part of the nineteenth century.