Wood, Horatio Charles, , Pennsylvania 1841 1920 Male Physician Teacher General physician and teacher, was born in Philadelphia, Pa. , the son of Horatio Curtis and Elizabeth Head (Bacon) Wood, and a descendant in the sixth generation of Richard Wood, Quaker, who emigrated from England to Philadelphia in 1682 and later settled in New Jersey.
His education was begun when he was three years old; at four he was sent to boarding school at Westtown, where he was the smallest boy among two hundred pupils, and where he said he received "valuable lessons in physical tenacity and endurance of punishment without flinching" (De Schweinitz, Transactions of the College of Physicians, post, p. 156).
At an early age he developed a passion for natural science and haunted the Academy of Natural Sciences, where Joseph Leidy [q. v. ] took an interest in him.
In 1862 he was graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania with the degree of M. D. , continuing his studies as resident physician at Blockley and the Pennsylvania Hospitals.
From there he went to the Friends' Select School in Philadelphia.
In 1861, when he was but twenty years old, the Academy published the first of his papers, "Contributions to the Carboniferous Flora of the United States, " and a "Catalogue of Carboniferous Plants in the Museum of the Academy" (Proceedings 1860, vol.
XII, 1861).
From the latter he entered the United States army in the midst of the Civil War.
He returned to Philadelphia at the close of the war.
Soon he became devoted to the study of nervous diseases, and by 1873 had earned a lectureship on nervous diseases and by 1876 a clinical professorship, which he held until 1901.
His scientific bibliography includes almost three hundred papers, and six books: Thermic Fever and Sun-stroke (1872), A Treatise on Therapeutics (1874), Brainwork and Overwork (1880), Nervous Diseases and Their Diagnosis (1887), Syphilis of the Nervous System (1889), and The Practice of Medicine (1897), written with R. H. Fitz.
His reputation as an entomologist may be judged by the fact that J. L. R. Agassiz [q. v. ] entrusted to him the specimens of Myriapoda that he had collected on his expedition to Brazil in 1866.
Wood served on the medical staff of the Philadelphia Hospital (Blockley) from 1870 to 1883, and on the neurological staff from 1883 to 1888.
Stillé's therapeutics was based upon experience, Wood's upon experiment, and the latter ushered in a new era.
[Who's Who in America, 1918-19; Guy Hinsdale, in International Clinics, 12 ser.
vol.
IV (1903); Henry Beates, Jr. , in Am.
Jour.
of Pharmacy, Aug. 1905; George de Schweinitz, in Alumni Reg.
of the Univ. of Pa. , vol.
XI, 1906-07, p. 196; H. A. Hare, in Therapeutic Gazette, May 15, 1920; H. C. Wood, "Reminiscences, " Trans.
Coll.
of Physicians of Phila. , 3 ser.
vol.
XLII (1920); G. E. de Schweinitz, H. A. Hare, C. K. Mills, and F. X. Dercum, Ibid. ; obituary in Pub.
Ledger (Phila. )
, Jan. 5, 1920. ]
His publications brought him the Boylston prize, the Warren prize, and the special prize awarded by the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia.
A daughter and three sons, two of whom became physicians, were the offspring of this marriage.
On May 10, 1866, he married Elizabeth, daughter of James Longacre.
On May 10, 1866, he married Elizabeth, daughter of James Longacre.
In addition, with J. P. Remington and S. P. Sadtler, he revised The Dispensatory of the United States, written by his uncle, George Bacon Wood q.v., from the fifteenth to the eighteenth edition.
