# American Medical Biographies/Bard, Samuel

​Bard, Samuel (1742–1821)
Samuel Bard, president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, was born in Philadelphia on the first of April, 1742. His father was John Bard, afterwards a physician of New York, and memorable for being the first person who performed a dissection and taught anatomy by demonstration on this side of the Atlantic. His mother was a Miss Valleau, a niece of Dr. Kearsley of Philadelphia, and likewise a descendant of the Protestant refugees. At the time of Dr. Bard's birth his father was practising in Philadelphia; but at the urgent solicitation of Dr. Franklin, he removed with his family to New York when Samuel was in his fourth year. Samuel received the rudiments of education in New York, at a grammar school; and at the age of fourteen years entered King's College under the private pupilage of Dr. Cutting. While at college he gave some attention to the study of medicine and afterwards regularly devoted himself to the profession under his father. About this time he imbibed his taste for botany from Miss Jane Colden, daughter of the then lieutenant-governor of the province and a correspondent of Linneaeus, Coldenia bearing its name in the Linneaean catalogue in her honor. She instructed Samuel during his occasional visits to the family and he repaid her attentions by drawing and coloring plants and. flowers for her. In the fall of 1760 he sailed for Europe; but being captured by a French privateer he was taken to Bayonne, and confined six months in the castle. Upon his release in the spring of 1761 he immediately proceeded to London. He was now, at the recommendation of Dr. Fothergill, received into St. Thomas' Hospital as the assistant of Dr. Alexander Russell, and continued in that capacity until his departure for Edinburgh. He graduated in 1765, after having defended and published an inaugural essay "de viribus opii;" and left Edinburgh loaded with honor, in consequence of having obtained the prize offered by Dr. Hope for the best herbarium of the indigenous vegetables of Scotland.
In 1765 he returned to his native country, married his cousin, Mary Bard, and began practice in New York in partnership with his father.
Dr. Bard had written to his father from Edinburgh that New York should have a medical college and after three years' residence at home he gained the cooperation of Drs. Clossy, Jones, Middleton, Smith and Tennent, instead of the younger practitioners he had first in mind, and in 1768 the school was established and united to King's College, Bard becoming professor of the theory and practice of physic at the age of twenty-eight. In his address at the first commencement in 1769 he so moved his auditors that a substantial subscription was raised for the benefit of the school, the Governor heading the list. Dr. Bard continued to serve the institution for forty years, the last twenty as trustee and dean of the faculty of physic.
On the commencement of hostilities in 1776, Dr. Bard's political principles being odious to the generality of the community, he thought it prudent to retire to Shrewsbury, New Jersey. He there occupied himself in making salt; but not succeeding to his satisfaction, and being unable to support his family comfortably, he returned to New York on its being taken possession of by the British troops. He immediately regained the lucrative practice he had left, and was so successful in business that at the end of the war he possessed a handsome independence. The high character which Dr. Bard maintained at this period cannot be better shown than by the fact that, notwithstanding political differences (and party-spirit was the ruling principle of the day), he was the family physician of General Washington during his residence in New York.
After several abortive attempts by the ​regents 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.