GEORGE ALFRED EVANS

Background

Alfred George Evans was born in Brooklyn. His father, Norris Evans, a carriage manufacturer, was of Welsh, and his mother, Sarah Ann Decker, of Holland-Dutch extraction.

Education

He attended the local public schools and in 1866, after a course of study at the Hudson River Institute, Claverack, New York, entered the Pennsylvania State Agricultural College, from which he graduated in 1870.

In the fall of 1870 he registered as a pupil with Prof. James R. Wood, a well-known surgeon of New York City and entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College, then a new institution, in 1871.

He confined his studies to the University of Wurzburg, and the names of his teachers suggest that he gave especial attention to histology and pathology and probably also to obstetrics and diseases of women and children.

Career

During the last two years at this institution he pursued studies which were preparatory to a medical training. Before his graduation in 1873 he served as interne in the New York City Insane Asylum. He at once opened an office in the family residence in Bedford Ave. , Brooklyn, but after a year of practise went to Germany to perfect himself in certain branches of the fundamentals of medicine. He confined his studies to the University of Wurzburg, and the names of his teachers suggest that he gave especial attention to histology and pathology and probably also to obstetrics and diseases of women and children. Upon his return in 1875 he reestablished himself in practise and in 1876 he secured an appointment as visiting physician to the Atlantic Avenue Dispensary. In the same year he read before the Kings County Medical Society his first paper on a medical subject, which dealt with the pathological histology of the heart. In 1879 he aided in founding the Bushwick and East Brooklyn Hospital and Dispensary of which he became visiting physician. Three years later his wife developed pulmonary consumption and he was obliged to take her to Texas, where for two years he practised medicine at San Antonio and at Boerne. In addition to an active general practise, which kept him much in the saddle, he served as head of an embryo sanitarium. The life was full of excitement through the proximity of hostile Indians and bad white men; and he had charge of the case of one Ben Thompson, known as the “last of the desperadoes. ” As his wife failed progressively Evans was obliged to return North in 1884, in which year Mrs. Evans died. He reestablished himself at his former Brooklyn residence where he practised until his retirement in 1907. He began to write articles on the treatment of respiratory diseases. His retirement in 1907 was due to heart disease, to which he finally succumbed at the age of seventy-five. Consumption when Evans began to study it seriously was still regarded as practically incurable, and, although he was not as well known to the public as his contemporary, E. L. Trudeau, he was, according to his colleagues, a force in showing the possibility of cure.

Achievements

• His attention, as a result of his personal experience, had now become focused on the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis and he became known preeminently as a specialist in diseases of the chest. He also went exhaustively into the climatological treatment of consumption and published several writings, during 1888-90, which are said to have created a sensation and to have inaugurated the movement which was to make of the lower Catskill region a climatological resort for consumptives.

Connections

In 1878 he married Emma Wilmot of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and In 1887 he married as his second wife Zoa L. Macumber.

Father:

Norris Evans

Mother:

Sarah Ann Decker

1st wife:

Emma Wilmot

2nd wife:

Zoa L. Macumber