Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/82

BARD of the university to revive the medical school on the restoration of peace, the trustees of Columbia College resolved to place it upon a permanent foundation, by annexing the faculty of physic to that institution in 1792. Dr. Bard was continued as the professor of the theory and practice of medicine, and was appointed dean of the faculty. His exertions were chiefly instrumental in the establishment of the city library, and of the New York Dispensary.

In the year 1795 he took Dr. Hosack into partnership; and in 1798 retired into the country, leaving that gentleman successor to his practice.

In the year 1811 he was elected an associate fellow of the college of Physicians of Philadelphia; and in 1816 the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by Princeton College. Dr. Bard was never ambitious of such distinctions.

He lived to the advanced age of seventy-nine years. In the latter years of his life he was afflicted with several severe attacks of a stricture of the esophagus, which greatly increased the bodily infirmities incident to old age. But to his last days he retained the perfection and vigor of his mind. Sensible of his approaching end, he had made it a business to prepare for death. And after arranging his temporal concerns and spending his last hours in devotional exercises, he died after a few hours illness of pleurisy, on the twenty-fifth of May, 1821, at Hyde Park, New York.

Dr. Bard's first literary production, an "Inaugural Essay" on the powers of opium, would not have been unworthy of his pen in the brightest period of his fame. At the time he wrote the powers of opium, the mode of its operation, and its various effects upon the body were but imperfectly understood and were matter of much difference of opinion among the profession in Edinburgh.

Shortly after, in 1771, he published "An Inquiry into the Nature, Causes and Cure of the Angina Suffocativa, or Throat Distemper, as it is Commonly Called by the Inhabitants of this City and Colony." Abraham Jacobi says of this (Archives of Pediatrics, N. Y., 1917, xxxiv, No. 1, 2–3): "Bard's book is wise and accurate. His style classical and simple, and the description of diphtheria in skin, mucous membrane and larynx is correct and beautiful. He knew the different forms of the disease even better than Dr. Douglass, of Boston, had distinguished them." In this valuable treatise may be found blood-letting suggested as a remedy, although claimed in later times as a discovery.

Dr. Bard's favorite branch was midwifery. And perhaps no physician in this country has ever enjoyed a larger share of practice in this department or acquired a higher reputation as an accoucheur. After retiring into the country one of the first plans of usefulness contemplated was the publication of a treatise upon this subject. His residence in the country, and the celebrity he had acquired as an obstetrician, accorded him frequent opportunities of witnessing the ignorance of midwives and country practitioners upon this important branch and determined him to issue a treatise with plain, practical directions for the management of natural labors. In the year 1807 he published "A Compendium of the Theory and Practice of Midwifery," intended chiefly for the use of midwives and young practitioners.

The work went through three large editions in its duodecimo form; and was twice published greatly enlarged and improved in octavo. At the time of his death he was preparing for the press a sixth edition.

In the year 1811 he published "A Guide for Young Shepherds," the best practical treatise then extant upon sheep breeding, the masterly performance of Chancellor Livingston not excepted.

Several fugitive essays by him are preserved in the American Medical and Philosophical Register; and other periodical journals are enriched by his communications. "The Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia" contain several papers by him on the subject of "Yellow Fever," and he wrote "A Discourse on Medical Education," New York, 1819.



Barker, Benjamin Fordyce (1818–1891)

Benjamin Fordyce Barker, generally known as Fordyce BakerBarker [sic], was a broad personality. Both in body and mind he won attention and cooperation from any group he came in contact with. Born, brought up and educated in the State of Maine he carried with him a vigorous physique and a robust and genial personality which communicated itself to those he met.

Naturally such a man appealed to those who were sick and suffering, especially when they