rections, New York, Nov. 1830." The reviewer condemns the plan and execution of the work, and shows that the national convention did not authorize or sanction its publication.
May 24, 1831, he was elected professor of materia medica in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, vice Dr. Benjamin Ellis, deceased, and was succeeded in the chair of chemistry by Dr. Franklin Bache.
Jan. 1833, The Dispensatory of the United States of America was published. This work was begun in Oct. 1830, in conjunction with Dr. Franklin Bache and Mr. Daniel B. Smith. The latter very soon withdrew. This Dispensatory is mainly an explanatory commentary on the Pharmacopœia of the United States. The first edition contains 1073 pages 8vo., and the fourteenth, published 1877, 1879 pages. It is estimated that 120,000 copies of this work have been sold.
Dr. Wood was elected a member of the Board of Trustees of the Girard College, February, 1833, by the City Councils, and served on it till the board was abolished Dec. 23, 1841—eight years. April 1, 1835, he presented a "Report of the Committee on Clothing, Diet, etc., to the Board of Trustees of the Girard College for Orphans and July 16, 1840, a "Communication from the Board of Trustees of the Girard College for Orphans to the Select and Common Councils of the City of Philadelphia." This paper is a succinct history of the transactions of the Board from its commencement.
Dr. Wood was always an advocate of temperance. He has recorded his views on "The Temperance Cause" in an essay published in the United States Review for January, 1834. He believed that "so long as the advocates of temperance refuse to admit the moderate use of pure fermented liquors, as cider, ale, the light wines, etc., within the meaning of the term, their cause will never be universally nor even generally adopted."
The death of his wife's father, May 10, 1835, placed him in comparatively easy circumstances, and he was soon after enabled to erect a spacious house in which he resided during the remainder of his life.
Oct. 6, 1835, he was elected professor of materia medica and pharmacy in the University of Pennsylvania, in place of Dr. John Rodman Coxe. Dr. Wood's lectures on materia medica were demonstrative. In addition to the collection of an admirable cabinet of illustrative drawings and specimens, he erected a spacious green-house in connection with a garden in the rear of his dwelling for the preservation and collection of medicinal plants.[1]
In 1835 he was elected one of the attending physicians of the Pennsylvania Hospital, and served till 1859—twenty-four years.
In his address to the medical graduates at the commencement, March 26, 1836, he gave a "Sketch of the History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania."
Jan. 23, 1839, he delivered an address on the "British East India Empire," before The Athenian Institute, an association of gentlemen formed for the purpose of promoting literary tastes and habits in Philadelphia. With this view they set on foot a series of weekly lectures, the subject being left to the choice of the lecturer. During the early years of his career, when he had less professional occupation than he desired, Dr. Wood became so much interested in the affairs of India, especially of Hindostan, that he began to qualify himself to write a history of the country, and employed his leisure in preparing a history of Christianity in India in eleven chapters. At this point his increasing professional avocations induced him to abandon the enterprise; but that so much work might not
- ↑ See Carson's History of the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylvania, Philada., 1869.
