THE AMERICAN 



MONTHLY 



MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 



VOL. XVII FEBRUARY, 1896. No. 2. 



Professor Alfred Clifford Mercer, M. D., F. R. M. S. 



PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN MICROSCOPICAL SOCIETY. 



WITH FRONTISPIECE. 



It is a source of congratulation that the journal is 

 able to present its readers with the portrait and a 

 biographical sketch of the President of the American 

 Microscopical Society, Professor Alfred Clifford Mercer, 

 M. D., F. K. M. S. He was born in Syracuse,- N. Y., 

 July 5, 1855. His father, Dr. Alfred Mercer, was, so 

 far as is known, the first physician to use the microscope 

 professionally in central New York. The old Spencer 

 stand with its beautiful and well preserved objectives, 

 made about 1863, still serves its owner for the oflBce study 

 of pathological fluids. Thus surrounded by the micro- 

 scopical influences of his father's oflfice, enjoying the 

 acquaintance of the famous optican, Charles A. Spencer, 

 and Spencer's Syracuse friend, Willard Twitchell, it was 

 only natural that very early there was awakened in the 

 boy the keenest interest in the microscope and its revel- 

 ations. In the Syracuse high school in 1874 and L875 an 

 added interest in this and in photography developed 

 under the practical teaching of Dr. Walter A. Brownell. 

 From this period may be dated Dr. Mercer's career in 

 photo-micrography, the first apparatus being constructed 

 by Chas. A. Spencer after Mercer's drawings. His inter- 

 est in photo-micrography has never flagged and many 



