Edward Mott Moore was born on 15 July 1814, in Rahway, New Jersey. He was the son of Lindley Murray Moore and Abigail Lydia (Mott). His father was a native of Nova Scotia, the son of Samuel Moore, a New Jersey Quaker who joined the Loyalist emigration after the Revolution; his mother was descended from ancestors who settled about 1644 at Hempstead, Long Island. After Edward's birth, the family moved successively to New York City, to Westchester, where the father conducted a school, and in 1830 to Rochester, New York.
Education
Edward commenced his education under his father and began the study of Latin and Greek at the age of four. A robust boy, he was early interested in farming and became one of the prize broadcast sowers of grain in the vicinity. He prepared for college under his father's direction and entered the Rensselaer School at Troy in the class with James Hall, who was for many years state geologist of New York. He withdrew soon, however, and in 1833, began the study of medicine at Rochester with Dr. Anson Coleman and in 1835, entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York. Later, he became a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was graduated M. D. in 1838. Thereafter he spent one and a half years as interne at Blockley Hospital, where he was associated with Dr. C. W. Pennock.
Career
Moore was given credit for original work on the heart in Pennock's American edition of James Hope's Treatise on the Diseases of the Heart and Great Vessels (1842). Unusually well equipped, he returned to Rochester in 1840 and entered upon the practice of his profession. His ability was immediately recognized and in 1842, he was called to the faculty of the Vermont Medical College, Woodstock, where he taught surgery for eleven years. For a part of that time, he also taught surgery at the Berkshire Medical College, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and in 1852, he became a professor of anatomy at Buffalo University. Resigning from these professorships in 1853 or early 1854, he taught surgery at the Starling Medical College, Columbus, Ohio, from 1853 to 1856. In the latter year, he severed his Columbus connection and returned to the University of Buffalo, where as professor of surgery he was associated with Dalton, Flint, Hamilton, and others, and continued to teach for twenty-six years. In 1882, he returned to Rochester.
In those years, such was the lack of knowledge of fractures and dislocations and so great the deformities resulting therefrom that his interest was challenged, and he devoted much attention to the study of their cause and treatment. Before the microscope had come into common use, he examined ground bones microscopically, embodying his conclusions in many lectures and monographs.
Achievements
In Rochester, Moore was a surgeon-in-chief of St. Mary's Hospital and organized the Infants' Hospital. He was president of the medical associations of Monroe County, Central New York, and New York State, of the American Medical Association, and of the American Surgical Association.
He contributed "Dislocations" to A Reference Handbook of Medical Sciences, edited by A. H. Buck, and "Gangrene and Gangrenous Diseases" to the International Encyclopaedia of Surgery, edited by John Ashhurst. His studies of fracture of the collarbone, of the superior end of the humerus, of the elbow joint, and of Colles' Fracture are recognized as pieces of original work, the correctness of which has since been proved by the use of the X-ray. Interested in communicable diseases, he became a member of the Rochester board of health and was the first president of the New York state board of health.
As an educator, he became a member and president of the board of trustees of the University of Rochester. He early advocated parks and was the first president of the Rochester Park Commission.
Personality
Moore was a man of robust frame and cultivated manner, kind, helpful, generous, courageous, who freely gave to others all that was in him during a long and useful life.
Connections
Moore was married in 1847 to Lucy Richard Prescott of Windsor, Vermont. Eight children were born to them, two of whom became successful physicians.
