American Medical Biographies/Bache, Franklin
Bache, Franklin (1792-1864)
With Dr. George B. Wood, Dr. Franklin Bache prepared the "Dispensatory of the United States of America" in January, 1833, a book which has gone through over twenty editions and as a volume of over 2,000 pages is in use to-day, Dr. Bache writing for the revisions until his death.
The boy Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin and Margaret Markoe Bache, was born in Philadelphia on the twenty-fifth of October, 1792, the great grandson of the Franklin, for his grandfather, Richard Bache, emigrating from Lancashire, England, in 1737, married Franklin's only daughter. At a school kept by a Dr. Samuel B. Wylie young Franklin had his early education, afterwards going to Pennsylvania University and graduating A. B. there in 1810; M. D. in 1814. After spending a year in the army as surgeon's mate, and two years as full surgeon, he resigned his commission in 1816 and began practice in Philadelphia, marrying Aglae, daughter of Jean Dabadie, a French merchant. She died seventeen years after, leaving him with six children. He was physician to the Walnut Street Prison, professor of chemistry in the Franklin Institute, physician to the Eastern Penitentiary and professor of chemistry in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in succession and with such training was appointed in 1841 professor of chemistry in the Jefferson Medical College, a position he filled for the rest of his life. When he became a fellow of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1829 he was appointed a reviser of the "United States Pharmacopœia," Dr. Hewson and Dr. George B. Wood aiding him. "For all this expenditure of time, thought and labor, not only in this revision but in all those with which he had been concerned, he neither expected nor received any other recompense than the consciousness of duty performed and public benefit conferred." In the spring of 1864, just after finishing the revision, he was attacked by typhoid fever, which carried him off on the nineteenth of March.
As a writer, during the ten years he acted as co-editor of the North American and Surgical Journal, he contributed many and valuable articles besides editing three important chemical works and writing largely for the "American Cyclopedia of Medicine and Surgery," edited by Dr. Isaac Hays.
Besides the appointments named he was vice-president of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, member of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science and for two years president of the American Philosophical Society.