four lectures delivered in April, May, and June. The first courses were delivered in 1866, and are continued.
Dr. Wood paid each professor $500 annually from the commencement, and bequeathed a fund of $50,000 from which the payment is to be continued. He also bequeathed to the University his numerous collections, all his medicinal plants, and $5000 to establish a botanical garden and conservatory, and to the University Hospital $75,000 to establish in it "the Peter Hahn Ward."
March 4, 186 7, Mrs. Wood died. The marriage was without issue.
April, 1872, he published his "Historical and Biographical Memoirs, Essays, Addresses, etc. etc., written at various times during the last fifty years, and now first published in a collected form," 8vo. pp. 576.
The aggregate of Dr. Wood's published writings exceeds 7000 pages 8vo., and, it is understood, he has left some manuscripts unprinted. He has achieved nothing in the fields of original research and invention.
He was an uncommonly skilful teacher, an effective writer, and successful author. Most of his study and writing were done during the night, between the hours of 10 P. M. and 4 A. M. He gathered reward as he worked without reckoning the prospective profit of his toil. He wrought incessantly. Even his annual summer journeys to different parts of the United States, or in Europe, seemingly for relaxation alone, always had some object of professional interest to be attained. Those summer jaunts were always made in a somewhat ostentatious style, so that he never appeared to strangers as a commonplace traveller. Though he frequently at home entertained tastefully and sumptuously numerous evening guests, social intercourse in the ordinary sense was not necessary to his happiness. His great pleasure was found in the solitude of his study. He was methodical in his way, painstaking and accurate in his work, and always punctual to the minute of appointment. He seemed to think that society generally is not aware of the incalculable benefits which are derived from the medical profession, independently of the services that the sick and wounded receive from it; that, in the estimation of the unthinking, medical attendance is necessarily personal service, and therefore a sort of servile occupation; and for this reason that the value of the profession is not appreciated as it should be. To make its dignity conspicuous, and place it higher in public estimation, was a lifelong purpose, to be achieved, in his opinion, by augmenting the facilities of the education and increasing the qualifications of its members. This disposition is manifest in his beneficence to the College of Physicians and to the University of Pennsylvania, as well as in his laborious contributions to the progress of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and to giving stability and due authority to the Pharmacopœia, which is ascribable largely to his labours.
Dr. George B. Wood died at his residence in Philadelphia, March 30, 1879, at the advanced age of 82 years, having spent his long life usefully and acceptably in every respect. He was generous, benevolent, charitable in the broadest sense of the term. His character is without stain.W. S. W. R.
