276 
MINUTES  OP  THE  COLLEGE. 
Dr.  Franklin  Bache  was  born  in  Philadelphia  in  1792  ;  he  was  directly 
descended  from  the  eminent  statesman  and  philosopher  of  our  Revolu- 
tionary era,  Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin,  being  his  great  grandson.  He  was 
educated  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  in  which  he  graduated,  first 
as  a  Bachelor  of  Arts,  and  afterwards,  in  1814,  as  a  Doctor  of  Medicine. 
After  three  years  spent  in  the  army,  first  in  the  capacity  of  Surgeon's 
mate,  and  afterwards  as  surgeon,  he  returned  to  practice  in  his  native 
city,  occupying  at  sundry  times  the  position  of  Physician  to  the  Walnut 
Street  Prison  and  the  Eastern  Penitentiary.  It  was  not,  however,  in  the 
capacity  of  a  medical  practitioner  that  he  was  destined  to  attain  eminence  ; 
his  talents  and  inclination  led  him  into  the  walks  of  science.  As  early 
as  1819  he  issued  his  first  work,  entitled  a  System  of  Chemistry  for  the 
use  of  Students  of  Medicine.  In  the  year  1826  he  commenced  his  career 
as  a  public  lecturer  on  Chemistry  in  the  Franklin  Institute  of  the  State  of 
Pennsylvania ;  from  this  position  he  was  called,  in  1831,  to  take  the  po- 
sition of  Professor  of  Chemistry  in  this  College,  Dr.  Wood  having  been 
transferred  to  the  chair  of  Materia  Medica.  It  is  among  the  chief  boasts 
of  this  Institution  that,  in  its  own  early  history,  before  its  school  of  Phar- 
macy had  become  extensively  known,  it  was  the  means  of  bringing  together 
in  its  faculty  two  men  so  eminently  qualified  to  be  pioneers  in  developing 
those  branches  of  knowledge  connected  with  its  peculiar  sphere  of  useful- 
ness. For  ten  successive  winters  Dr.  Bache  lectured  to  the  then  small 
classes  which  met  in  this  hall  to  receive  instruction  in  Materia  Medica  and 
Chemistry,  and  in  Pharmacy  as  taught  incidentally  by  the  two  professors. 
It  was  at  the  beginning  of  the  year  1833  that  the  U.  S.  Dispensatory 
appeared,  the  joint  work  of  Drs.  Wood  and  Bache  ;  it  immediately  took 
high  rank  as  a  clear  and  accurate  treatise  upon  drugs,  and  following  im- 
mediately on  the  Pharmacoepia,  then  just  beginning  to  be  appreciated  as 
an  authoritative  standard,  aided  much  in  giving  currency  to  its  formulae, 
and  establishing  it  in  the  esteem  of  the  Medical  and  Pharmaceutical  pro- 
fessions. It  would  be  impossible  to  estimate  the  influence  of  this  work,  in 
educating  and  informing  the  mass  of  those  concerned  in  the  sale,  prepa- 
ration and  administration  of  medicines  ;  it  has  undergone  eleven  revisions, 
and  has  been  disseminated  not  only  throughout  our  own  country,  but  in 
Europe  and  elsewhere. 
In  1841  Dr.  Bache  resigned  his  professorship  in  this  College  to  accept 
a  similar  position  in  Jefferson  Medical  College,  which  he  occupied  to  the 
time  of  his  death.  In  the  several  Pharmaoonoeal  Conventions  he  was  en- 
gaged as  an  important  member,  and  in  that  of  1860  was  appointed  Chair- 
man of  the  Committee  of  Revision,  which  met  at  hi3  residence  in  this  city, 
and  during  over  one  hundred  meetings  carefully  considered  every  detail  of 
the  work,  and  issued  it  in  its  present  improved  form.  Dr.  Bache  was  not 
without  many  evidences  of  the  appreciation  of  his  fellow-citizens,  and 
especially  of  the  medical  profession  ;  he  was  an  Ex-President  of  the  Ame- 
