Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/45

ALTER with Dr. Edward Gillespie and James Gillespie of Freeport entered into the manufacturing of bromine from the mother liquid of salt wells, by a process which he and his partners invented and patented. A large jar of this then rare substance was exhibited at the World's Fair in New York in 1853, where it excited much wonder. Before the discovery of petroleum he had invented a rotating retort for the extraction of oil from cannel coal. This discovery bid fair to become a profitable industry until the discovery of the natural oil rendered the operation superfluous.

The greatest legacy, however, which Dr. Alter left to posterity was the result of his discovery and application of the principles of the prism in spectrum analysis. The data regarding this discovery are taken from an article published in the Pittsburg Dispatch in January, 1882, by Dr. Frank Cowan. That Dr. Alter's discovery antedates that of Kirchoff is proven by the fact that some five years before the latter published his discovery, Dr. Alter's paper appeared in the American Journal of Sciences and Arts (Silliman's Journal), second series, volume xviii, November, 1854. It was entitled, "On Certain Physical Properties of Light, Produced by the Combustion of Different Metals in the Electric Spark Refracted by a Prism."

A second article by Dr. Alter appeared in the same journal, May, 1855, entitled: "On Certain Physical Properties of the Light of the Electric Spark within Gases, as seen through a Prism."

A brief abstract of the first article appeared in Europe in the Chemic Jahresberichte in 1845 and the second was reproduced in its entirety in the Paris Journal L'Institute for the year 1856 and in the "Archives of the Physical and Natural Sciences, of Geneva." It would thus seem proven beyond any doubt that to Dr. Alter belongs the credit of the discovery of the principles underlying spectrum analysis. Dr. Cowan states that the prism with which he made the first experiments was obtained by Dr. Alter from a fragment of a large mass of very brilliant glass found in the pot of a glass-house destroyed in the great fire of Pittsburg, April 10, 1845.

Dr. Alter's early educational opportunities appear to have been very meager, so much so that he was largely self taught. His medical education was obtained in New York where he graduated at the Reformed Medical College of the United States in 1831, an institution of the eclectic or botanic school. Definite information regarding his medical education is lacking because of the destruction of the records by fire.

Dr. Cowan says of him: "In his life he was a plain and simple man, gentle and modest in manner, temperate in his habits and careful and patient in his work."

He was twice married: to Laura Rowley by whom he had three children, and to Amanda B. Rowley who bore him eight children, four sons and four daughters. One son, Myron Hale Alter, graduated in medicine at the Baltimore Medical College and rose to prominence as a practitioner of medicine.

Dr. Alter died in Freeport, Pennsylvania, September 18, 1881, aged seventy-four. The exact cause of death is unknown but appears to have been a gradual weakening of the vital powers incident to old age.



Althof, Hermann (1835–1877)

Hermann Althof was born the eighth of August, 1835, at Horn, in Lippe-Detmold, Germany, and died in New York January 14, 1877, of erysipelas. He was the youngest son of a school teacher in his native town.

In 1847 he accompanied his father on a visit to his elder brother, who had settled in New York City. After his return he began to study medicine, first in Wurzburg, later in Zurich, Vienna, Prague, and Berlin, where he received his diploma in the year 1857. Here Prof. A. von Graefe began to interest himself in the progress of his gifted pupil, with whom he tried to form a closer alliance by offering him a position as one of his assistants. Dr. Althof, however, left Berlin to continue his studies in Paris, where he studied ophthalmology under Desmarres, and afterwards practised in New York in 1858. Two years later he left the city again for Europe, spending part of a year in Wurzburg, with Prof. Muller, devoting himself to the study of pathological and microscopical anatomy, and part in Berlin with Graefe. After his return he devoted a large portion of his time to those public institutions to which he had become attached, the German Hospital and Dispensary, as well as the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary; in the latter he filled the place of executive surgeon for about eighteen months before his death. He was one of the founders of the Ophthalmological Society of New York and of the American Ophthalmological Society.

His contributions to Ophthalmological literature are all of importance. He published