Ahern, Michael Joseph (1844–1914)
Michael Joseph Ahern, protagonist in the field of Listerian surgery in Quebec, was born in Quebec in 1844 of parents who came over from Cork, Ireland. He studied in the local schools and resolved to teach as a profession. Curé Saxe, however, persuaded him to seek a wider field and he took up medicine in the Laval University in 1864 and graduated Doctor of Medicine in 1867, then serving as interne in the Marine and Immigrants' Hospital, Quebec.
He stepped into the shoes of Dr. McCraw and gradually built up a substantial practice and married Georgine Marcotte of Quebec in 1876.
In 1878 he was made professor of anatomy and in 1885 of clinical surgery in Laval. Born in the days when anesthesia had but recently arrived to mitigate the horrors of surgery and extend its domain, he had yet to see its promised benefits, largely dissipated by the continued reign of pyemia, erysipelas, hospital gangrene and purulent infections of all sorts. These he combated by the introduction of the new Listerism into the Hotel-Dieu of Quebec. He was, like so many of his confrères, in all ages and clinics, interested in science, especially in botany and mineralogy; he made collections of the fossils found in the rocks of the Quebec mountains, and at his death over four hundred named specimens of the Niagara formation were presented to the Geological Museum of the University.
His last work was an uncompleted "History of Medicine in Canada" under French Rule. He died April 18, 1914.
Alcott, William Alexander (1798–1859)
William Alexander Alcott, physician and author, was born in Wolcott, Connecticut, August, 6, 1798. By hard work on the farm he supported himself, and paid for tuition in the medical school of Yale University, and before many years became a man of great influence in the community and acquired considerable practice.
He was a man of excellent common sense, and quickly detected the folly of the fantastic therapy dominating the medical world in his day and long after it, and many illuminating experiences led him to abandon the use of one drug after another; all this is detailed in an autobiography with the quaint title, "Forty Years in the Wildernesses of Pills and Powders." He early realized the advantages and made use of hydrotherapy as an adjunct in the treatment of disease.
He had great confidence in calomel and gave enormous doses without apparent ill effects. He describes his treatment of croup in a child to whom he administered a teaspoonful at a dose and the little patient soon recovered.
About 1832 Alcott removed to Boston and associated himself with William Woodbridge in the preparation of school geographies and atlases and in editing the Annals of Education. The people among whom he had lived had only the most rudimentary education; the schools taught reading, but "figuring" had to be learned after hours; a few could do small sums in subtraction but almost none could multiply or divide. He edited Juvenile Rambles, the first weekly periodical published in America for children. He wrote "On the Construction of School-Houses." It is said he visited 20,000 school-houses. In all, Alcott published upward of one hundred books and pamphlets, many dealing with education, morals and physical training, and he was identified with noted reforms.
He died in Auburndale, Massachusetts, March 29, 1859.
Alden, Ebenezer (1788–1881)
Dr. Alden, medical biographer, was born at Randolph, Massachusetts, March 17, 1788. He was descended through both father (Dr. Ebenezer Alden) and mother (Sarah Bass) directly from John Alden of the Mayflower.
He graduated from Harvard College in 1808 and received his M. B. from Dartmouth Medical School in 1811 and M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1812, during his pupilage coming under the instruction of Nathan Smith, Rush, Barton and Wistar. He settled as a physician in his native town where he passed his entire life.
From 1837 to near the close of life he was a trustee of Phillips Academy and Andover Theological Seminary. He was also a trus-
