American Medical Biographies/Lee, Charles Alfred
Lee, Charles Alfred (1801–1872)
Charles Alfred Lee, son of Samuel and Elizabeth Brown Lee, was born at Salisbury, Connecticut, March 3, 1801. He graduated A. M. at Williams College, Massachusetts, in 1822.
He began to study medicine with his brother-in-law, Luther Ticknor, M. D., of Salisbury, Connecticut, and graduated M. D. from the Berkshire Medical Institution at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1825, where he held the office of demonstrator of anatomy during the winter session, and instructor in botany during the summer course.
On the tweny-eighth of June, 1828, he married Hester Ann Mildeberge, daughter of John A. and Ann DeWitt Mildeberge, of New York City, and had nine children, only three of whom, all sons, survived.
When the Northern Dispensary of New York City was being established, Dr. Lee and Dr. James Stewart were among its most active and most efficient promoters.
He accepted the chair of materia medica and general pathology in the Geneva Medical College, New York.
After the year 1850 Dr. Lee devoted himself chiefly to teaching various branches of medicine in different medical colleges, among which may be named the University of the City of New York; Geneva Medical College; University of Buffalo, medical department, Vermont Medical College, at Woodstock; Maine Medical School, at Brunswick; Berkshire Medical Institution; Starling Medica! College, Columbus, Ohio. The branches taught by him in these different colleges were: therapeutics and materia medica; general pathology, obstetrics, and diseases of females; hygiene and medical jurisprudence.
In 1850, in connection with his colleagues, Drs. Hamilton, Flint, Hadley, and Webster, he founded the Buffalo Medical School, acting under the charter of the University of Buffalo.
He wrote extensively on a great variety of medical and scientific subjects. His "Physiology for the Use of Elementary Schools" was published by the American Common School Society about 1835 and passed through ten or more editions, much popularizing this important branch of knowledge. His "Manual of Geology for Schools and Colleges" was published in 1835. In 1843 he was instrumental in establishing the New York Journal of Medicine and the Collateral Sciences.
In 1845 Dr. Lee brought out an edition of "Principles of Forensic Medicine," by William A. Guy, M. D., with extensive and valuable notes and additions, and in 1848 commenced the most important and laborious professional work of his life—the editing an American edition of Dr. James Copland's "Dictionary of Practical Medicine," issued irregularly in London. The Dictionary was fifteen years in passing through the press of the Harpers, owing to its slow publication by the author in London. The entire work forms three immense octavo volumes. He also edited and enlarged an English work entitled "Bacchus, an Essay on the Nature, Cause, Effects and Cure of Intemperance," by Ralph B. Grindrod; also A. T. Thomson's "Conspectus" of the London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Colleges, and of the United States Pharmacopoeia; also "Pharmacologia, or, the Theory and Art of Prescribing," by J. A. Paris, M. D.
During the last years of his life he wrote a work on the "Indigenous Materia Medica of the United States," which is in manuscript and would form a volume of about six hundred pages.
In the spring of 1862, the second year of the war, Dr. Lee visited Europe to collect plans, models, and specifications of the best and most recent naval, civil, and military hospitals of Great Britain and the Continent, for the use of the United States Government. These, with others, were placed in the archives of the War Department at Washington. He wrote for the American Medical Times, of New York, about fifty elaborate and carefully prepared letters designed to furnish useful information to our military and naval surgeons.
During the war he accepted a situation as hospital inspector and visitor, in the United States Sanitary Commission's employ. He labored efficiently in this field until the close of the war, and in the spring of 1865, soon after the surrender of Gen. Lee's army, the doctor was engaged for several months throughout the South in collecting materials for "Memoirs of a Sanitary History of the War." ("Sanitary Records and Medical History of the War," issued by the United States Sanitary Commission.)
Lee was a member of the New York Academy of Medicine and the New York State Medical Society.
He was taken ill on the thirtieth day of January, 1872, with endocarditis, and died after two weeks of suffering. His wife and three sons survived him.