For many years, Dr. Alvah Hunt Doty has been keeper of the gateway to this port from the sea - the guardian of the nation, as well as city, from epidemics of all kinds that threatened the public health. Under his direction, all incoming steamers and sailing craft were boarded, their passengers and crew submitted to keen scrutiny and persons afflicted with contagious diseases removed to the hospitals in the Lower Bay. So efficient has been his watchfulness that not a case of cholera or yellow fever has got past the Quarantine.
Dr. Doty received his medical education in this city and was graduated from the Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1878, and for several years was a lecturer at his Alma Mater on "Quarantine Sanitation." About 1894, he succeeded Dr. Jenkins as Health Officer of the Port of New York and was retained in that important post until February, 1912, when Gov. Dix appointed a successor.
He is a Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine and a member of the New York State Medical Society.
Source: The Book of New York: Forty Years' Recollections of the American Metropolis. By Julius Chambers. [New York: Book of New York Co., c1912], pages 352-353.
For a genealogy of Alvah Hunt Doty, see the family trees at Rootsweb.
Also see the duties of The Health Officer of the Port of New York as proscribed by law.
See the Obituary for Dr. Alvah Hunt Doty.
