His father, a physician, was a native of Jefferson County, N. Y. , and a descendant of a seventeenth-century New England settler from Yorkshire.
His mother, the daughter of a Crown official in Canada, was of French descent, the family name having originally been Legault.
Wood attended private French and English schools and in 1874 graduated from the Ottawa (Ontario) Collegiate Institute.
He then entered the medical school of the University of Bishop's College (the school, located in Montreal, was later merged with the medical school of McGill University); he received the degrees of Master of Surgery and Doctor of Medicine in 1877.
While a student he attended the lectures of Dr. William Osler [q. v. ] at McGill, and the two became lifelong friends.
Becoming interested in diseases of the eye, Wood in 1886 began a course of training at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary and the Post-Graduate Medical School.
He then went to Europe, where he studied at eye clinics in Berlin, Vienna, and Paris and spent the years 1888-89 as clinical assistant at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital (Moorfields).
Returning to the United States in 1890, he settled in Chicago.
In Washington he formed a close friendship with another medical historian and bibliophile, Fielding H. Garrison [Supp.
1]; the two collaborated in preparing A Physician's Anthology of English and American Poetry (1920).
Among these was a strong interest in birds, particularly in their mechanism of seeing, as evidenced by his book Fundus Oculi of Birds (1917).
In the fall of 1920 he joined the famous zoologist William Beebe in a trip to British Guiana to study the eyes of birds and reptiles of that tropical area.
During these trips he also searched for medieval books and manuscripts relating to the history of ophthalmology, and in 1929 he brought out a translation of De Oculis, a fifteenth-century treatise by Benevenutus Grassus of Jerusalem.
Two years later he published An Introduction to the Literature of Vertebrate Zoology, the result of many years' research.
Thereafter Wood spent most of his time in Rome, where he was given free access to the treasures of the Vatican Library.
The works included the "Memorandum Book" of Ali ibn Isa, a tenth-century oculist of Baghdad.
Wood learned enough Arabic to translate the book, with the assistance of Dr. Max Weyerhof of Cairo, and it was published in 1936.
With the outbreak of World War II, Wood reluctantly left Rome and returned to California.
His ashes are buried in the Mount Royal Cemetery, Montreal.
Throughout his life Wood was devoted to McGill University, which gave him the honorary degrees of Doctor of Medicine (1906) and Doctor of Laws (1921).
Through the Casey A. Wood Foundation at McGill, which he had endowed in 1912, he established the Wood Gold Medal for the best examination in clinical subjects.
[Obituaries in: Archives of Ophthalmology, Apr. 1942 (by Frank Brawley); Am.
Jour.
of Ophthalmology, May 1942 (by Burton Chance), and editorial in issue of Apr. 1942; Canadian Medic.
Assoc. Jour. , Mar. 1942; Jour.
Am.
Medic.
Assoc. , Mar. 21, 1942; Military Surgeon, May 1942; New Eng.
Jour.
of Medicine, June 25, 1942; and, on Wood's ornithological work, the Auk, Oct. 1942.
See also Who Was Who in America, vol.
II (1950).
The dates of Wood's appointments at the Univ. of Ill.
College of Medicine were supplied by Dr. Alexander M. Cain of the Lib.
of Medic.
Sci. , Univ. of Ill. at the Medic.
Center, Chicago.
Other information from Mrs. Margaret Farmer of the Medic.
Lib.
and Miss Ellen B. Wells of the Osler Lib.
at McGill Univ. ]
He made long sojourns in India and Ceylon, spent more than a year traveling throughout the islands of the South Pacific, and often visited Europe.
They had no children.
In later years, often accompanied by his wife, Wood carried out similar studies in many parts of the world.
On Oct. 28, 1886, he married Emma Shearer of Montreal, who shared his interest in natural history and his pleasure in an outdoor life.
Wood, Casey Albert, (Nov. 21, 1856 - Jan. 26, 1942), Canada 1856 1942 Male Bibliophile Ophthalmologist Ornithologist ophthalmologist, ophthalmic ornithologist, and bibliophile, was born in Wellington, Ontario, Canada, the third of four children of Orrin Cottier Wood and Rosa Sophia (Leggo) Wood.
His final publication, The Art of Falconry (1943), was a translation of a thirteenth-century work, De Arte Venandi cum Avibis, by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, made by Wood and his niece and close companion, F. Marjorie Fyfe.
