Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/803

MERCER 781 MERCER with his parents, came to America and settled at New York Mills, New York, where some of his brothers had previously found homes. The old people were not happy there and with- in a year returned to England. To give Alfred new-world opportunities, he was left in the care of his next older brother, George, a tailor, to whom he was apprenticed for seven years. The two brothers w.ere nearly shipwrecked on the Erie Canal during a jour- ney to Lima, New York, where in May, 1833, a tailoring business was started. Those were days of homespun and tallow candles. With small earnings Alfred bought books which he read or studied both on the tailor's bench and by candle light after long working hours. Evening work stopped at nine and he was up at six in the morning. After completing his apprenticeship, a visit to England, in 1840, and a short experience in business for himself, he had saved suffi- cient money to enable him to carry out a resolution he had long previously made to some day be a graduate from the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima. He was graduated in the class of 1843. He then began the study of medicine with Doctor John P. Whitbeck, of Lima, and later of Rochester, New York, as his preceptor, and was in 1845 graduated from the then well-known Geneva Medical College. In 1846 and 1847 he again visited his parents, and attended clinics in the hospitals of Lon- don and Paris, conducted, as his notes show, by such men as Quain, Listen, Fobes, Cooper, Lawrence, Addison, Ricord, Roux and Velpeau. On his return he began to practise in Mil- waukee, Wisconsin. In 1848 he practised in Rush, New York; in 1849 in Lima, New York; in 1851 and 1852 in Geneseo, New York ; and June 14, 1853, settled permanently in Syracuse, New York. Doctor Mercer from time to time served in official positions, in local, state and national medical societies. He appreciated their value and attended meetings as often as he could, always ready to contribute to discussions the results of his experience and somewhat broad acquaintance with medical literature. His library was unusually large, not confined to medical books and periodicals, and contained many an old volume which originally belonged to the first and venerable Doctor Edward Augustus Holyoke (q. v.), of Salem, Massa- chusetts. Doctor Mercer was the first physician in Central New York, beginning in about 1862, to commonly use the microscope for clinical purposes. The objectives made by the remark- able optician, Charles A. Spencer, then of nearby Canastota, New Y'ork, are still, in 1919, beautifully crisp in definition. When in 1871 the removal of the Geneva Medical College to Syracuse,' to become a col- lege of Syracuse University, was under con- sideration, the Onondaga Medical Society warmly favored the proposition and appointed a committee of which Doctor Mercer was chairman to represent the society in the move- ment. At the time the removal occurred, in 1872, Doctor Mercer became a member of the faculty and its treasurer. He was an early pleader for higher standards in med- ical education, for graded courses to extend over a period of from three to five years. He served as treasurer for many years. He was professor of minor and clinical surgery from 1872 to 1884. From 1884 to 1895 he was professor of state medicine, and after 1895 until his death was emeritus professor of the same subject. For nearly a quarter of a century he was surgeon to the hospital of the House of the Good Shepherd ; and, later, consulting surgeon to that hospital and also to the Syracuse Free Dispensary. He was a member of the American Public Health Association; was for six years health officer of Syracuse; and, later, for seven years president of the local board of health ; and for five years he served under Grover Cleve- land on the New York State Board of Health. Doctor Mercer was a general practitioner, a family physician of a passing type, but doing more surgical and obstetrical work than the average doctor. As a student and in early practice he witnessed the horrors of major surgery without anesthesia. Before the days of antisepsis and modern asepsis, he cared for his first thousand obstetrical cases without losing mother or child. In the next case he lost the child. His non-professional interests were many and diversified. He made numerous trips to Europe and traveled considerably on this side of the Atlantic, at first by stage, boat and walking through the middle West; later, by rail and steamer, he saw something of the great West and Alaska. He kept himself in- formed on the issues of the passing periods of an unusually long life. He was habitually one of the earliest voters on election days. He was fond of outdoor games, playing some of them in a moderate way in early years and attending with much interest baseball and foot- ball games in later years. In conversation his face lighted up with a kindly warmth of at- tention, interest and sympathy — with every- body. During the early and middle years of prac-