He was born in Burlington on February 1, 1716. Peter, the father of John, went to London and from there was sent by an uncle on a mercantile venture to Delaware. Finding himself unsuited for business he moved to Burlington, New Jersey, was appointed a judge of the supreme court and a member of the governor's council, and died at an early age, leaving his widow, a daughter of an English physician named Marmion, to bring up a family of seven children on very slender means.
John, the third son, was sent to Philadelphia to be educated and was fortunate in being under the instruction of a Scotch gentleman by the name of Annan, an accomplished Latin scholar and a man of polished manners. When the pupil reached the age of fifteen, he was bound apprentice to a Mr. John Kearsly, an English surgeon of the town, talented but of bad temper, who treated his underlings with great severity and subjected them to the most menial tasks. John submitted through fear of disappointing his mother and because of his affection for Mrs. Kearsly, who had shown him great kindness. For seven tedious years he remained with Mr. Kearsly, taking the hours for study from sleep, when the family had gone to bed.
He early formed an intimacy with Benjamin Franklin, ten years his senior; they were members of the same social club and corresponded through life. John Bard settled in practise in Philadelphia, where he married a Miss Valleau, a niece of Mrs. Kearsly, and like himself a descendant of a refugee from France. When he had been there some seven years (1746) he was induced by Franklin to move to New York, to take the place of Dr. Dubois and Dr. Dupie, who had just died of yellow fever. He soon gained a large practise among the better classes; he had sound professional knowledge, considerable conversational ability, and tact coupled with great cheerfulness. He kept the service of the public in mind, and in 1759, upon the arrival in New York Harbor of a Dutch ship containing cases of a malignant shipfever, he was employed by the town to take quarantine measures. Every nurse and attendant caught the disease, and Bard was impelled to draw up a memorial to the corporation of the town urging the expediency of providing a pesthouse against the occurrence of similar epidemics. The result was the purchase of Bedloe's Island with the building upon it and the appointment of Bard as health officer. He held also the position of surgeon and agent for the sick and wounded seamen of the British navy at New York, retaining the office until he retired from practise.
Concerning the first recorded instructional dissection, in which Bard and Peter Middleton were associated, we have this description from the pen of David Hosack, who was in partnership with Bard's son Samuel: "As early, however, as 1750, the body of Hermannus Carrol, executed for murder, was dissected in this city by two of the most eminent physicians of that day, Drs. John Bard and Peter Middleton, and the blood vessels injected for the instruction of the youth then engaged in the study of medicine; this was the first essay made in the United States for the purpose of imparting medical knowledge by the dissection of the human body, of which we have any record".
In a letter to John Fothergill of London, dated Dec. 25, 1759, Bard reported A Case of Extra-Uterine Foetus that was read to "A society of physicians in London, " on March 24, 1760, and published subsequently in Medical Observations and Inquiries, London, 1763, vol. II. This was a most interesting case, in which Bard, in the presence of an army surgeon named Huck, opened the abdomen of the mother of two children, nine weeks after the delivery of the second, and evacuated a full-time macerated fetus and much pus, the patient subsequently nursing her live baby and making a good recovery. In the numbers of the American Medical and Philosophical Register are to be found several papers on yellow fever by John Bard and, after his death, there was published in that periodical (April 1811, I, 409-21) an essay on the nature and cause of malignant pleurisy, which had been "Drawn up at the request of a weekly society of gentlemen in New York, and addressed to them at one of their meetings, January 1749. " This is the only and scanty reference to the earliest medical society in New York, which apparently was patterned after the London society of Fothergill.
Soon after the beginning of the Revolution (1778) Bard retired to a farm he had purchased at Hyde Park, in Dutchess County, on the Hudson. He and his son Samuel, who had joined with his father in practise, held with the mother country to which they were under many obligations. At the peace of 1783 Bard returned to New York and to practise, for his funds were low. On the organization of the Medical Society of the State of New York, in 1788, he was chosen the first president; in 1795, being then in his eightieth year, he gave an address before this society calling attention to the presence of yellow fever in the city and making suggestions as to its treatment. This caused considerable feeling against him in the community, but he persisted in proclaiming the danger until the inhabitants saw that he was right and took proper measures to prevent the spread of the disease. Three years later he gave up practise and retired to Hyde Park, where he had his children about him. There he died of cerebral hemorrhage at the age of eighty-three, full of honors and with the satisfaction of a life of work well done.
Up to the end he maintained his charm of conversation, vivacity of manner, and optimism. The engraving of him in the American Medical and Philosophical Register shows us a man of middle age, clothed in the custom of his time, and with a wig terminating in a neat braid on his shoulders; the face indicates determination with a background of geniality.
He married a Miss Valleau, a niece of Mrs. Kearsly, and like himself a descendant of a refugee from France.
