Document Request: Biography of Alexander E W Ada
Document Description: Extract from the book Surgeons & Surgery of St Luke's Hospital in New York by John P West
Transcription URL: https://ada.surnametree.com/library/vdocs/D_84#84
Document Transcription:
Dr Ada was born in Canada and graduated from the Queens University Medical College in 1926. He served as an intern and resident at Kingston Hospital from 1926 to 1927. He then came to the United States and spent the next two years as a resident for private patients at St Luke's. In 1929 he was appointed to the attending surgical staff. Later he was an associate professor of clinical surgery at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University.

Dr Ada had a special interest in thoracic surgery and was director of surgery at the Seton Hospital for Tuberculosis. He and Dr Lyle performed the first successful pneumonectomy at St Luke's. Because of his reputation as a thoracic surgeon he was a consultant to several hospitals in the greater New York area.

He was a member of the New York Surgical Society, the New York Society for Thoracic Surgery, the American College of Surgeons, and the Founders’ group of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery.

Dr Ada was an energetic, ambitious, confident and very careful surgeon. Because of this enthusiasm and skill the rest of the surgeons enjoyed working with him.

Away from the operating room he was a vigorous and gregarious extrovert who loved competitive sports, especially golf and curling. The golf pro at Saint Andrew’s club was very fond of Alex and after a playing lesson would often smile and say that Dr Ada and given him lots of good advice!

His early and untimely death from leukaemia, soon after his retirement, was a tragic loss to his many friends and patients.

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