Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/200

 BOND

of his influence in founding the first hospital and the first medical school (The Pennsylvania Hospital and the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania).

The son of Richard and Elizabeth Chew Bond, he was born in Calvert County, Maryland, in 1712. He studied medicine under Dr. Alexander Hamilton, complet- ing his education by European travel and special study at the Hotel Dieu, Paris. He probably came to Philadelphia and began practice there in 1734. When but eighteen he married Sarah Roberts and had seven children, Elizabeth, Thomas, Sarah, Rebecca, Phoebe, Robert, and Venables; Thomas and Robert following their father's profession.

Bond's young brother Phineas came from Maryland in 1738 and the two broth- ers practised in partnership, being speci- ally active in affairs of municipal health.

It must be recalled that at this time Philadelphia was but a village. When Bond was at the height of his reputation (1769) the city had a population of 28,000. The streets were unpaved and unlit at night; there were no daily papers and but few vehicles.

Dr. Bond was accustomed to visit his patients in a two-wheel sulky drawn by a black horse. This was a very unusual method of conveyance at that time and supposedly permitted only to aged and infirm doctors, and was probably enjoyed by Bond because of his delicacy. In the earlier years of his practice, Bond had a great deal of experience in disease com- mon to immigration; he was on intimate terms with two physicians of the port — Drs. Thomas Graeme and Lloyd Zach- aray. That they saw a good deal of yellow and typhus fever was probable as he refers to five epidemics of typhus in his introduction to clinical lectures. Be- tween 1740 and 1754 Bond was constant- ly asked to visit suspected vessels and attend to the isolation of suspicious cases and fumigating infected houses or ships. His work would now be classed as that of a good, all-round general practitioner; but in his day surgery had not reached its

i BOND

present dizzy height, and his practice must be considered both medical and sur- gical. He reduced and splinted fractures, incised breasts, and imposthumated livers, scarified "mortifying" feet, ampu- tated legs, tapped not only legs but both chest and abdomen, operated for stone in the bladder, attended difficult confine- ments, and also saw much of measles, small-pox, typhus and the other infectious diseases.

Benjamin Rush gives Bond credit for the instruction and general use of mer- cury in practice in Philadelphia. It was his habit to prescribe it in all cases which resisted the common methods of practice. Bond also used the hot and cold as well as vapor and warm air baths in the treat- ment of disease and had baths introduced into the Pennsylvania Hospital. He also devised a splint called by his name for fracture of the lower end of the radius, which has been familiar to all graduates in medicine during the last hundred years.

It is probable that Dr. Bond from the nature of his practice daily realized the comfort and aid which a well equipped hospital would furnish to many of his patients. It is an assured fact that he constantly talked to his friends and pa- tients about the foundation of a hospital for the care of sick and injured to say nothing of the care of the insane. During the first years of the Pennsylvania Hos- pital a considerable proportion of its work consisted in the care of the so-called lunatics.

It was not, however, until Bond approached Benjamin Franklin and ex- plained to him the value of such an institution to the community, that any material progress was made.

The year 1765 marked the beginning of systematic medical instruction in the United States; that year's courses in anatomy and surgery (and midwifery) were given by William Shippen, Jr., and lectures on physic by John Morgan. Dr. Bond taught clinical medicine the fol- lowing year, and continued to hold clinics at the Pennsylvania Hospital till his