George Bacon Wood
WOOD, George Bacon,
author, born in Greenwich, Cumberland County, New Jersey, 13 March,
1797; died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 30 March, 1879. His parents
were members of the Society of Friends. He received his early education
in the city of New York, was graduated at the University of Pennsylvania
in 1815, and in medicine in 1818, and in 1820 delivered a course of
lectures on chemistry in Philadelphia. He was professor of chemistry in
the Philadelphia college of pharmacy in 1822-'31, of materia medica in
1831-'5, held the same chair in the University of Pennsylvania in
1835-'50, and that of the theory and practice of medicine in that
institution from 1850 till 1860, when he resigned. He was eminently
successful as a lecturer, and while in the chair of materia medica
exhibited to the students many specimens of rare living tropical and
other exotics, which he had secured at great expense, and of which he
had occasion to treat in his lectures. In 1865 he endowed an auxiliary
faculty of medicine in the University of Pennsylvania composed of five
chairs--zoology and comparative anatomy, botany, mineralogy and geology,
hygiene, and medical jurisprudence and toxicology--and by will he
endowed the Peter Hahn ward of the University hospital. He was physician
in the Pennsylvania hospital in 1835-'59, became president of the
American philosophical society in 1859, and was for many years president
of the College of physicians of Philadelphia.
With Franklin Bache, M.
D., he published "The Dispensatory of the United States" (Philadelphia,
1833). Of this work 150,000 copies were sold during Dr. Wood's lifetime,
the royalty to the authors being about $155,000. He also published "A
Treatise on the Practice of Medicine" (2 vols., 184';); " A Treatise on
Therapeutics and Pharmacology, or Materia Medica" (2 vols., 1856) ;
"Introductory Lectures and Addresses on Medical Subjects" (1859); and,
of lesser works, " History of the University of Pennsylvania"
(Philadelphia, 1827) ; "Memoir of Samuel G. Morton" (1853) ; and
"Memoirs of Franklin Bache" (1865).
Edited Appletons
Encyclopedia, Copyright © 2001 VirtualologyTM
|