Reed Brockway Bontecou (April 22, 1824 – March 27, 1907) was an American surgeon, whose extensive photographic documentation of soldiers' wounds during the Civil War informed medical treatment, and were widely used to determine the degree of injury which determined of post-war pension payments.

He graduated B. S. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1842; was instructor in botany and zoology, 1843; studied medicine with Drs.

John Wright and Thomas C. Brinsmade of Troy; attended lectures, medical department, University of the City of New York, 1844–45; made a trip up the Amazon river, 1846, to collect flora and fauna for the Troy Lyceum of Natural History; graduated M. D., Castleton, Vermont, Medical College, 1847, and began to practise in Troy with Dr. Thomas C. Brinsmade.

From October, 1863, to June, 1866, he was surgeon in charge of United States Army General Hospital, "Harewood," at Washington, District of Columbia, one of the largest hospitals of the war, with a capacity of 3,000 beds.

For many years he was attending surgeon at Watervliet Arsenal, West Troy, and attending physician and operating surgeon for twenty years at Marshall's Infirmary, Troy, where he made the first operation in this country and the second in the world for typhoidal perforation.