Background
Alden March was born on September 20, 1795 in Sutton, Worcester County, Massachussets, the son of Jacob and Eleanor (Moore) March, of old New England ancestry.
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Alden March
Edit ProfileEducation
His father, a poor farmer with a large family, had a hard struggle with the soil, and the son received little schooling. Upon the father's death in 1814 he took charge of the farm and family for a while. In 1817 he was in Hoosick, N. Y. , teaching in a writing school and working in a stone and slate quarry. One year later he was influenced by an elder brother, David, then an army surgeon, to take up medicine, and during 1818-19 attended lectures on anatomy and surgery at Boston, at the same time making up for defects in his early education. In 1820 he graduated from the Medical Department of Brown University (later abolished).
Career
Before he was established, he performed an operation for hare lip. He settled in Albany in 1820 as a general practitioner and at once opened a private school of anatomy with fourteen pupils. He taught by lectures and dissections, obtaining his first cadaver by freighting it overland from Boston. He also at once began a private collection of anatomical specimens. So much enterprise and originality on the part of a man of twenty-five antagonized the local representatives of his profession, and despite his efforts both practice and school failed to prosper. Sinking further and further into debt, he thought seriously of abandoning his practice in Albany and trying to find a more congenial location, but his landlord, one of his creditors, persuaded him to remain, and by 1824 his circumstances had changed for the better. In the 1825 was made professor of anatomy and physiology in the Vermont Academy of Medicine at Castleton, Vt. with which he was connected until 1838, meanwhile continuing his practice and his school of anatomy. In 1830 he published A Lecture on the Expedience of Establishing a Medical College and Hospital in the City of Albany, thus incurring once more the hostility of the profession and notably that of the local Fairfield Medical College and the other medical schools of New York State. He went ahead with his project, however; the new institution was opened, and he served it as professor of anatomy and operative surgery. When the buildings were burned in 1834, however, he resumed his private venture, under the style of Practical School of Anatomy and Surgery. In 1839 the Albany Medical College was formally opened, and March, having resigned his chair at Castleton, became professor of surgery. His free surgical clinics on Saturdays, at which the students were enabled to watch all kinds of operations on a great variety of clinical material, made the College famous. The Fairfield Medical School soon agreed to merge with the new institution and eventually the Albany City Hospital was established. March was made professor of surgery in the consolidated college and retained the chair until his death. In 1853 he published a pamphlet entitled Coxalgia or Hip Disease and in the same year another on an ingenious forceps devised by him for hare lip operation. He wrote a number of other papers, published chiefly in the Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of New York. During the last year of his life he attended the meeting of the Association at New Orleans in apparent health, but his death revealed that for years he had suffered from prostatic obstruction. A controversy was started after his death as to the correctness of the diagnosis and treatment.
Achievements
Personality
March had a farm near the city, and his only recreation was to visit it as often as possible and perform hard farm labor. His great surgical hobby was hip-joint disease.
Connections
In 1824 he married Joanna P. Armsby.
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Born
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Died
June 17, 1869 (aged 73) -
Nationality
American