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GEORGE B. WOOD. 



ceedings of our own society, and elsewhere. But now ill health and 

 sorrow arrested his work, and a cloud of mental infirmity overcast his 

 last days. He was a man of fine appearance, full of energy, business 

 talent, and public spirit, and of marked character. He was unmarried. 

 He gave his botanical collections and library to the University of his 

 native State, and bequeathed the principal part of the somewhat ample 

 property which he had acquired to excellent charities, and for the pro- 

 motion of the study of his favorite science in the State of Rhode 

 Island. If bis bequest for this purpose is carried into full effect, a 

 very important foundation will be laid for the study of botany in this 

 country, which should keep his name in perpetual remembrance. The 

 name of Olney is borne by more than one species of plant of his own 

 discovery, and by a remarkable genus, a Leguminous tree of Arizona, 

 discovered by one of his former associates. 



GEORGE B. WOOD. 



There are but few names in the medical profession of this country 

 more widely known than that of Dr. Geouge B. Wood. 



Holding as he did, for thirty -eight years, important professorships in 

 the chief centre of medical learning on this continent, his influence 

 upon hundreds of students of pharmacy and medicine must necessarily 

 have been deeply felt and wide spread. 



He was born at Greenwich, New Jersey, March 13, 1797, and edu- 

 cated at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving his degree in 1818. 



In two years after graduation he began to teach chemistry, and in 

 two years more was appointed Professor of that science in the Phila- 

 delphia College of Pharmacy. From this time onward he was en- 

 gaged in the teaching of materia medica and of the theory and practice 

 of medicine, until his appointment as Professor Emeritus in the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania, in 1860. With this event, however, his in- 

 terest in medical education did not cease, for in 1865 Dr. Wood 

 endowed an auxiliary Faculty of Medicine in the University of Penn- 

 sylvania for the teaching of certain sciences, which are usually some- 

 what thrust aside or neglected in the hurried three (or two) years of 

 the usual American medical course. 



Dr. Wood was the author of numerous and valuable works, chiefly 

 relating to his profession, although a volume of historical and bio- 

 graphical papers was published in 1872. 



His most voluminous and best-known works were the United States 

 Dispensatory, written in conjunction with Dr. Franklin Bache, and 



