Born and raised on a Southern plantation in Alabama, he served in the Confederate States Army and completed his medical studies in New York City and Europe.

[1] His father, Louis Wyeth, was a lawyer who founded the city of Guntersville in 1848 and later served in the Alabama state legislature.

[1] On his paternal side, Wyeth was related to George Wythe, a Virginia lawyer who was also opposed to slavery.

[1] He joined the 4th Regiment Alabama Cavalry under General Joseph Wheeler, and served in the Battle of Chickamauga of 1863.

[1] He was captured by Union forces and jailed at the Camp Morton in Indianapolis, Indiana, from October 1863 to February 1865.

[1] By 1918, the Polyclinic Graduate Medical School merged with the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

[6] In a 1915 article published in the North American Review, Wyeth suggested Mexico was "a disgrace to civilization," partly due to widespread addiction to pulque and to a "disregard" for the institution of marriage.

[7] He suggested: The hopelessness of the Mexican situation lies chiefly in the impossibility, under conditions which have long existed, of bringing the people together in a common understanding of each other; and, in the opinion of the writer, nothing but intervention on our part, and the establishment of a stable government, by force, if necessary, can accomplish this.

As plainly as the writing on the wall, our national destiny is impelling us to the occupation of Mexico; not for conquest, not for commercial gain, but for the benefit of her unfortunate people should we establish and insure forever in that unhappy land the order of civilization.Wyeth married Florence Nightingale Sims, the daughter of surgeon J. Marion Sims, on August 10, 1886.