Source: Atkinson, William B. Physicians and Surgeons of the United States, Charles Robson, Philadelphia, 1878, page 507

Joel Cullen Hall, McKinneyville, Miss., of American parentage and English ancestry, was born in Limestone co., Ala., April 8th, 1838. Having graduated from the Miss. coll. in 1857 he entered Long Island coll. hosp. and took his degree of M. D. in 1861. He commenced practice in Vicksburg, but removed to a point fifty miles north of that city on Deer creek among the large plantations in the Yazoo delta. Though in general practice, he prefers surgery. After the close of the civil war, in which he took active part, he again settled in Issaquena co., Miss., where he opened a large plantation of five hundred acres, which he has transformed from wild, uncultivated canebrake and stocked with every appliance for the successful cultivation of a farm of that size. He is a member of the Mississippi State Medical Association; of the Sharkey County Medical Assocation (formerly the Issaquena County Medical Assocation, of which he was the organizer and first president, a position he has held twice since ); honorary member of the Vicksburg Medical Association; and permanent member of the American Medical Assocation. Among his contributions to medical journals are " Ipecacuanha in Dysentery," 1868; "Infantile Malarial Toxaemia," Medical and Surgical Reporter, 1874; "An Improved Method of Treating Dysentery with Iodine," Transactions Miss. State Medical Assocation, 1877; "Malarial Hematuria," and others before the county medical society. During his first residence in Vicksburg he was elected assistant physician to the city hospital. He entered the Confederate army as volunteer surgeon, and was assigned to the 37th Tennessee Volunteers, participating in every engagement from Shiloh to the surrender of the army of the Tennessee in April, 1865, serving in hospital and in the field, and acting as medical director, medical inspector, brigade surgeon, etc., and performing every important operation incident to the battlefield. During his service he organized a brigade infirmary corps, who were instructed in the performance of duties necessary to the immediate relief of the wounded, by lectures, dissections, plates, and careful training; adopted means for rendering the department under his command less cumbersome, and successfully devised plans for the increased efficiency of his branch of the service, and the utilization of all the elements under his charge, by an appropriate division of labor, thus enabling every wounded man to receive attention at the earliest possible moment. Removing to Vicksburg during a temporary overflow of his section of the country, he was elected, in 1867, by the city council of Vicksburg, health officer of the port, and quarantined the city against the introduction of yellow fever, then prevailing in New Orleans and along the lower coast. He is now a member of the State legislature, to which he has been twice elected; and is one of the board of examiners for the office of superintendent of public education. On March 17th, 1868, he married Louisa S., daughter of Hon. Wm. T. Barnard, of Issaquena Co., Miss.