TURNER, Philip, surgeon, born in Norwich, Connecticut, 25 February, 1740; died in New York city, 20 April, 1815. He was left an orphan at the age of twelve, and adopted by Dr. Elisha Tracy, under whom he studied medicine and whose daughter he married. In 1759 he was appointed an assistant surgeon to a provincial regiment that served under General Jeffrey Amherst at Fort Ticonderoga. After the peace of 1763 he settled in Norwich, where at the beginning of the Revolutionary war he was unrivalled as a surgeon. In 1775 he was the first surgeon of the Connecticut troops before Boston, and in 1776 he accompanied the Continental army to New York, attending it at the battles of Long Island and White Plains. Dr. Turner was appointed surgeon-general of the Eastern department in 1777, and filled that post with great ability till near the close of the Revolutionary war. He then resumed his private practice in Norwich, but removed in 1800 to New York city, and soon afterward was appointed a surgeon to the staff of the United States army and stationed on Manhattan island. Dr. Turner was interred with military honors in the church-yard of St. Paul's in New York city.