Joshua Harlan Carey was born May 5, 1916, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, the only child of Joshua Harlan and Margaret (Smith) Carey. He died in that city May 6, 1993. Between these dates he travelled and worked in the midwestern, eastern, and southeastern parts of the United States.

Carey received his primary and secondary education in Coeur d'Alene, graduating from Coeur d'Alene High School in 1934. while there he developed a keen interest in nature and especially in biology. He attended Coeur d'Alene Junior College for two year, then transferred to the University of Idaho where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1939; he received his medical degree from the University of Chicago in 1944. Following two years in the Philippines and Korea as a member of the U.S. Army Medical Corp., he returned to Chicago where he served consecutive residencies in ophthalmology, pediatrics, and neurology. In 1951 he went to the University of Michigan where, in addition to serving on the neurology faculty he successfully pursued a Ph.D., receiving his degree in 1956, in neuroanatomy, and began a long association with Dr. Elizabeth Crosby.

From 1956 to 1966 he served on the neurology and pediatric faculty at the University of Buffalo, and also set up a private practice in pediatric neurology in nearby Hamburg, New York.

In order to be closer to a research group in comparative neurology formed by Dr. Crosby he moved to Birmingham, Alabama, in 1966, where he joined the University of Alabama School of Medicine in anatomy, pediatrics, and neurology.

The year 1972 saw another move, this time to New Orleans, where he purchased a home on Bourbon St. in the Vieux Carre district, and befriended a wide variety of people, poets and peasants, bankers and bums. He loved the history and art of New Orleans, both sacred and profane.

As he grew older and his energy waned, he spent more time at his cabin on the shores of Priest Lake in Northern Idaho, finally retiring there about 1988. He died quietly in 1993 in a convalescent home in Coeur d'Alene one day after his 77th birthday.

Earl Hamel and Norman Schnitzlein, colleagues at the University of Alabama wrote in a biography of Dr. Carey which they prepared for Anatomical Record, "Joshua Carey did not leave a mark as a great scholar or as a wealthy entrepreneur. The mark that he left is in the hearts of the people he met. As a pediatric neurologist he treated many children with neurologic deficits and helped both them and their parents deal with conditions that otherwise would have been very frustrating. This behavior led him to personal relationships with many families wherein he became known as 'Uncle Josh.' Though he never married he had many children in many families who remember him as being generous to a fault. The care that he gave his patients will be missed but the absence of the sound of the drummer to which he marched will be a great silence to all who knew Josh."