Bio: Herbert Alton Durham, M. D.; North Hero, VT., then Caddo Parish,
Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller
Date: 1999-2000





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Herbert Alton Durham, M. D., who has achieved high place and genuine
distinction among American Orthopedic surgeons, served as a surgeon throughout
the World war and is now serving as surgeon in chief in the Shriner's Hospital
for Crippled Children at Shreveport.  This hospital is the first unit of a
number of such hospitals established, and to be established, throughout the
United States by the Mystic Shrine.

Doctor Durham is a New Englander by birth, and his home was in the east until
he came to Shreveport.  He was born at North Hero, Vermont, in 1887.  He is a
graduate of the University of Vermont, from which he received his medical
degree in 1909, and after a year of private hospital internship he became a
member of the staff of the New York Orthopedic Hospital, his connection with
this institution covering, in all, about twelve years.

Being a lieutenant in the Medical Reserve Corps of the U. S. Army, he was
called to active duty in May, 1917, and was chosen as one of the first twenty
bone and joint surgeons to be sent abroad.  He was sent to England, where he
was attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps and assigned to duty at the
Alder-Hey Surgical Hospital at Liverpool, England, remaining there until
April, 1919.  He was then recalled to the United States and assigned to duty
as consulting bone and joint surgeon in the U. S. Base Hospitals at Camp Dodge
and at Fort Riley.  He was honorably discharged from the service August 1,
1919, having been in the meantime advanced to the rank of major, February 17,
1919.

In 1914 he had been awarded a scholarship by the New York Orthopedic Hospital
entitling him to a year's travel and study in Europe, and he was in Germany at
the very outbreak of the war.  He studied in the great hospitals and clinics
in Heidelberg, Berlin Vienna, Munich and other cities, remaining in Germany
until that country mobilized her armed forces in August, 1914.

Following his discharge from military service Doctor Durham resumed his work
in the Orthopedic Hospital in New York, and in October, 1923, accepted the
appointment of surgeon in chief of the Shriner's Hospital at Shreveport, his
duties as such being supplemented by a private practice.

Doctor Durham is a member of the American Medical Association; is an honorary
member of the Association of Military Surgeons; and is a Mason.  He married
Miss Beatrice Anderson, of Toronto, Canada, and they have two children:  Mary
Barbara and  Herbert Anderson.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 212, by Henry E. Chambers.  Published by
The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.