Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 2.djvu/227

 MOTT 199

that, while the departed doctor's body was lying in state in the parlor of his home, a decrepit woman came into the chamber of death, and "cried to God to bring him back to her and her sick child." "The half crazed woman spoke," this correspondent says, "for thousands who felt the same desolation."

Among the positions held were: sur- geon to Gov. Hoffman's staff, with rank of brigadier-general; military superin- tendent and surgeon in charge of the Albany Hospital for disabled soldiers; surgeon-general for New York; deputy health and executive officer of the port of New York; member of the commission of experts, appointed by Pres. Hays to study the origin and cause of the yellow-fever epidemic; member of the medical and surgical staffs of the Albany and St. Peter's Hospitals; founder, trustee, and professor of the Albany College of Phar- macy; president of the faculty of the same institution; and a member of innumerable medical societies. His most distinguished work by far, however, was done as professor of medical juris- prudence and hygiene in the Albany Medical College. ("Medical Record," New York, 1883, vol. xxiv.)

T. H. S.

Medical Annala, Albany, 1883, iv.

Tr. Med. Soc, N. Y., Syracuse, 1SS5 (W.

G. Tucker, M. D.).

Mott, Alexander B. (1826-1889).

It is always rather a doubtful privilege to be the son of an illustrious father particularly when following in his pro- fession, but Mott the younger was operating with his father when only twenty-four. He was the fourth son and fifth child of Dr. Valentine and Louisa Dunmore Mott and grandson of Dr. Henry Mott, and born in New York City the twenty-first of March, 1826. As a boy he went to Columbia College Grammar School. Then followed five years in Europe with his family, an experience in naval warfare as marine in 1844, and in a mixed pursuance of medicine and business at Havre, France. On returning home he

MOTT

graduated (in 1850) at the Vermont Academy of Medicine and took his di- ploma from the New York Medical Col- lege. He had been helping his father before graduation and continued to do so, taking charge of and performing most of the operations in the surgical clinics.

In 1851 he married the youngest daughter of Thaddeus Phelps and ten years later, like most doctors, went off to the war as brigade-surgeon, and medical director successively, helping to found the first United States Army General Hospi- tal in New York, in which were received some 4,000 patients. This gave him fine surgical experience — an experience which, coupled to his natural genius, consider- ably improved the health of New York's citizens. Among other operations, nine times he tied the common carotid; twice exsected the entire ulna, and twice re- moved the entire lower jaw. He may justly be said to have transmitted to posterity the heritage of a name illustri- ous in surgery with added memories of fine work. On August 11, 1889, he died at his country house at Yonkers, after a two days' illness from pneumonia.

Among his writings was: "Surgical Operations and the Advantages of Clini- cal Teaching."

His appointments included: senior surgeon. Mount Sinai Hospital; surgeon, Bellevue Hospital; surgeon, New York State Mihtia; co-founder and professor of anatomy in Bellevue Hospital Medical College.

There is a portrait in the Surg.-gen. Library,

Wash., D. C.

Med. and Surg. Reporter. Phila., 1864-5.

Mott, Valentine (1785-1865).

The dead are often praised more than the living, and many a cry of expostula- tion, heart-broken sometimes in its appeal for justification, has been uttered by doctors who were allowed no honest joy in their vanquishment of dread dis- ease. So Valentine Mott, a leader in surgery at last, perhaps a Uttle querulously defiantly said: "Men who have never done anything themselves have attempt-