Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/629

Rh ed to congress in the same year and served, with re-election, from 4 July, 1861, till 3 March, 1865. Throughout his career in Washington he persist- ently opposed the continuation of the civil war, and his conduct in that respect led to the prefer- ring of charges against him in the house, with the result that the matter was referred to a committee for consideration ; but no action was taken in the matter. His paper was suppressed for eighteen months during the first years of th« war. On 29 April, 1867, he began its publication as an evening journal, at the price of one cent a copy. It was the first daily to be issued at that price after the war, and it attained the largest circulation of any journal in the United States, and the third largest of any daily paper in the world. In March. 1876. he founded the " New Yorker Tages-Nachrichten," a German evening paper, which is still continued, and previously he established the " New York Sun- day News." Mr. Wood is the author of " Fort La- fayette, or Love and Secession " (New York, 1862).

WOOD, George, lawyer, b. in Chesterfield, Bur- lington co., N. J., 17 Jan., 1789 ; d. in New York city, 17 March, 1860. He was graduated at Prince- ton in 1808, and. after studying law with Richard Stockton, was admitted to the bar in 1812. Set- tling in New Brunswick, he soon rivalled his pre- ceptor, and he has been referred to as the ablest lawyer that his state ever produced. His power of analogical reasoning was very striking, and he had the faculty of so stating a question as to make the mere statement an argument in itself. The law of this country on charitable devises was in a great degree unsettled in his time, but Mr. Wood was able to elucidate that subject in such a manner as to form a guide for the decisions and learning of this country. In 1831 he went to New York city, where he took a high rank among lawyers, and he was engaged in chief cases not only there but throughout the United States. In his later years his efforts were much directed toward the maintenance of sound government principles, and to the preservation of the constitution in its integ- rity. On one occasion, when William C. Preston, of South Carolina, was about to argue an important case in the U. S. supreme court, Daniel Webster asked him who was on the other side. Preston replied that it was a man from New York, whose name he could not recall, and said, " a sleepy-look- ing fellow named Wood, I think." " If it is George Wood," said Webster, " I advise you to look out how you wake him up." The degree of LL. D. was conferred upon him by Hamilton college in 1842 and by Union in 1845.

WOOD, George, author, b. in Newburvport, Mass., in 1799 ; d. in Saratoga Springs, N. Y., 24 Aug., 1870. He studied under Samuel L. Knapp, and removed with his mother and family to Alex- andria, Va., in 1816. He was a clerk in the war department in 1819-'22, and in the treasury in 1822-'45, after which he removed to New York, but returned to Washington, resumed his clerical labors in the treasury department, and became chief of the navigation division. Mr. Wood con- tributed to the " Knickerbocker Magazine " in 1846-7, and to the " National Era," of Washington, and other periodicals. He published "Peter Schlemihl in America" (Philadelphia, 1848) ; "The Modern Pilgrim: showing the Improvements in Travel, with the Newest Methods of Reaching the Celestial City " (2 vols., Boston, 1855) ; " Marrying Too Late : a Tale " (New York, 1856) : and " Future Life, or Scenes in Another World" (1858). On the publication of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's " Gates Ajar," Mr. Wood's last-named book was reissued j with the title "The Gates Wide Open" (Boston, 1869), and four editions were sold in one week.

WOOD, George Bacon, author, b. in Greenwich, Cumberland co., N. J., 13 March, 1797; d. in Philadelphia, Pa., 30 March, 1879. His parents were members of the Society of Friends, He received his early education in the city of New York, was graduated at the University of Pennsylvania in 1815, and in medicine in 1818, and in 1820 delivered a course of lectures on chemistry in Philadelphia. He was professor of chemistry in the Philadelphia college of pharmacy in 1822–'31, of materia medica in 1831–'5, held the same chair in the University of Pennsylvania in 1835–'50, and that of the theory and practice of medicine in that institution from 1850 till 1860, when he resigned. He was eminently successful as a lecturer, and while in the chair of materia medica exhibited to the students many specimens of rare living tropical and other exotics, which he had secured at great expense, and of which he had occasion to treat in his lectures. In 1865 he endowed an auxiliary faculty of medicine in the University of Pennsylvania composed of five chairs—zoölogy and comparative anatomy, botany, mineralogy and geology, hygiene, and medical jurisprudence and toxicology—and by will he endowed the Peter Hahn ward of the University hospital. He was physician in the Pennsylvania hospital in 1835–'59, became president of the American philosophical society in 1859, and was for many years president of the College of physicians of Philadelphia. With Franklin Bache, M. D., he published "The Dispensatory of the United States" (Philadelphia, 1833). Of this work 150,000 copies were sold during Dr. Wood’s lifetime, the royalty to the authors being about $155,000. He also published "A Treatise on the Practice of Medicine" (2 vols., 1847); "A Treatise on Therapeutics and Pharmacology, or Materia Medica" (2 vols., 1856); "Introductory Lectures and Addresses on Medical Subjects" (1859); and, of lesser works, "History of the University of Pennsylvania" (Philadelphia, 1827); "Memoir of Samuel G. Morton" (1853); and "Memoirs of Franklin Bache" (1865).—His nephew, Horatio C, physician, b. in Philadelphia, Pa., 13 Jan., 1841, was graduated at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1862, and established himself in practice in Philadelphia, making specialties of therapeutics and nervous diseases. In 1866 he was appointed professor of botany in the auxiliary medical faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, but in 1876 he relinquished this department to accept the chair of therapeutics. In 1875 he had been made clinical professor of diseases of the nervous system. The last-mentioned charges he still retains. In 1879 he was elected to the National academy of sciences, He was visiting physician of the Philadelphia hospital in 1872–'87, and to St. Agnes’s hospital in 1886, and has held the same relation to the University hospital since 1870. He has published "Experimental Researches in the Physiological Action of Nitrite of Amyl," for which he received the Warren prize from the Massachusetts general hospital in 1871; also memoirs on "The Myriapoda of North America" (1865); "On the Phalangidæ of North America" (1868); "The Fresh-Water Algae of North America" (1872); and "Fever, a Study in Morbid and Normal Physiology" (1880). The two last-mentioned were issued by the Smithsonian institution. Dr. Wood edited "New Remedies" in 1870–'3: "The Philadelphia Medical Times" in 1873–'80; and since 1884 has conducted "The Therapeutic Gazette." He was also an editor of the "U. S. Dispensatory" (14th ed., Philadelphia, 1883 et seq.). He has also published "Researches upon American Hemp," for which a special prize was awarded by the American philosophical society; "Thermic Fever, or Sunstroke" (Philadelphia, 1872), for which he received the Boylston prize from Harvard university in 1872; "Treatise on Materia Medica and Therapeutics" (1875; 7th ed., 1888); "Brain-Work and Over-Work" (1879); and "Nervous Diseases and their Diagnosis" (1886).