A recital of what Dr. George B. Wood has done is a fitting tribute to his memory. We may follow him through his public life, to use the language of woodmen, by the blazes which he has made, almost yearly, along his path, from the obscurity of private life to the brightness of renown. That the career of one who has deservedly attracted and long held the respectful attention of the profession, both at home and abroad, should be noticed in this Journal is unquestionable.
Dr. Wood was born March 13, 1797, in Greenwich, one of the oldest settlements on the river Cohansey, in Cumberland County, New Jersey. His parents belonged to the religious Society of Friends, were well-to-do farmers, and for some time kept a wholesale and retail store of miscellaneous goods. They and their ancestors, at the time of his birth, had owned and occupied the estate on which he was born a half century and upwards. They were always highly respected and influential in the community.
In 1815 Dr. Wood received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania, became a pupil of Dr. Joseph Parrish, a leading practitioner of the day, and in 1818 acquired the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the same institution. Dyspepsia was the subject of his inaugural essay.
When Dr. Wood entered the ranks of the profession, the leading medical minds of Philadelphia and of the country generally had become more than usually interested in measures of improvement. Although the ability and disposition of the professors to teach thoroughly was not doubted, it was believed that the medical teaching of the University, then the only chartered medical school in the city, was defective. The length of the medical session did not afford time enough to enable the professors to deliver complete courses. Lectures on some subjects were omitted every year. As a remedy for such defect, preceptors, in addition to the personal attention which had been usually given to their pupils, employed assistants to impart instruction on special branches; and not long afterwards associations were formed to supplement the teaching of the University, by courses of lectures delivered during the spring and summer. One of these was The Medical Institute of Philadelphia, founded by Dr. Nathaniel Chapman, and another, The Philadelphia Association for Medical Instruction, founded by Dr. Joseph Parrish, both including members of the medical faculty of the University.
In the cities practitioners had ceased almost entirely to supply medicines to their patients. The apothecaries generally were not systematically taught. Very few of them were skilful or scientific pharmacists. No standard of officinal preparations had been established for the common observance of apothecaries of all parts of the country. The strength of preparations was not uniformly the same in different localities, nor even in all shops of the same town. Under such a condition it may be taken for granted that practitioners were reluctant to confide their prescriptions to be dispensed by apothecaries indiscriminately, and that the necessity of establishing a national pharmacopœia was manifest.
It was fortunate for him in the end, perhaps, that when Dr. Wood entered the field, the satisfaction of his personal wants and desires was to be attained and measured by the profits of his own labour. Besides a liberal education, he possessed good health, firmness of purpose, energy, and marked capability of continuous work. It is probable that his first professional aspiration was to become a teacher. He had learned that adequate knowledge and training are essential to success in every vocation, and early acquired a habit of carefully arranging what-
