John D. Buckler

Artist: Louis P. Dieterich (right); Oil on canvas

John Buckler was born near Baltimore in 1795. He attended the University of Maryland, and graduated in 1819. He was a physician at the Baltimore General Dispensary from 1816 to 1822. He was a curator at the Maryland Academy of Science in 1824 to 1826 he was a member of the Medical Society of Maryland from 1821 to 1822.

Dr. Buckler was a "fencible" – or citizen soldier – defending Baltimore's Fort McHenry when the September 1814 siege took place.  Years later, he returned to the Fort to treat a patient of his who had been imprisoned by the Federal army - a Police Commissioner who was dying of consumption/ tuberculosis.  

Dr. Buckler also had the dubious role of physician to Poe - or so it appears when you see a reference to both his advice to his patient and to "The Mrs. Dr. Buckler" - Eliza Sloan Buckler, by Edgar Allan Poe in 1835 (June and May, respectively).

He was the Corresponding Secretary of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland in 1826. Dr. Buckler was an Adjunct Professor of Anatomy at the University of Maryland’s Medical School in 1826-1827.

“Dr. John Buckler, profiting by that excellent clinical school, the Baltimore General Dispensary, and subsequently by entire devotion to his profession, attained it is said, extraordinary diagnostic skill and a very large practice, which left him no leisure for the cultivation of literature.”

He died at age 71 in 1866.