Dr. Joseph Franklin Montague (1895-1974) was elected to The Lambs in 1919 as an Army/Navy member when he was serving in the Medical Corps, U.S. Navy Reserve. Dr. Montague had a long and distinguished career in medicine, which led him to author numerous books and travel across the country for lectures and symposiums. He was a Lambs member for 55 years.
He was born Aug. 6, 1895, in Brooklyn. Dr. Montague studied at the New York University School of Applied Science and the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. After serving as a doctor in the Navy and the Marine Corps in World War I, he became a noted gastroenterologist. He was the founder and director of the New York Intestinal Sanitarium.
He was president of the American Proctological Society (today the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons). In the 1920s, he was on the staff of Bellevue Hospital. In 1927, he presented a paper to the American College of Surgeons on the usefulness of motion pictures to capture surgeries in operating rooms, and to build a library of films to study medical practices.
Dr. Montague was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the International College of Surgeons. He was a director of the Medical Writers Institute and president of American Medical Authors, Inc. He authored more than ten books about medicine aimed at the general public. Among these was “Broadway Stomach,” 1939, which has nothing to do with live theater. Dr. Montague wrote that physicians could apply the term to “a state a mind, rather than a definite place and physical condition” resulting in what he called “the high-voltage, high-pressure way of modern life.”
Among his other books were “Troubles We Don’t Talk About,” 1927; “Taking the Doctor’s Pulse,” 1928; “I Know Just the Thing for That,” 1934; “Nervous Stomach Trouble,” 1940, and “How to Overcome Colitis,” 1956.
Dr. Montague was a member of the Explorer’s Club and when astronaut Neil Armstrong visited the Club, the doctor presented him with an original painting he created.
Dr. Montague was a resident of Garrison, New York. He died in February 6, 1974 in Sun City, Arizona. He was 78 years old.
Research by Shepherd Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, 2026.