Richard was born on April 1, 1844 near Sharpsburg, Bath County, Kentucky, United States, the son of Samuel and Sally (Lane) Stone. Samuel Stone, grandson of Josiah Stone, an English immigrant to Virginia, was a member of the Kentucky legislature and brigadier-general in the state militia.
He moved his family to Putnam County, Indiana, in 1851, and there Richard received his early education in the public schools and in Bainbridge Academy. He taught school and studied medicine under Dr. J. B. Cross of Bainbridge for four years, and in 1863 entered Rush Medical College in Chicago.
He was shortly transferred to Philadelphia, Pa. , where he served successively in three large military hospitals and attended the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1865.
After studies he was appointed a medical cadet in the Union army and assigned to duty at Madison, Indiana.
During the following year he served as acting assistant surgeon at camps at Key West and Cedar Keys, and in the post hospital at Monticello, Florida. He resigned from the military service in April 1866 and returned to Indiana, where he practised at New Albany, at Carpentersville, and finally at Bainbridge.
After 1880 he lived in Indianapolis. At various times he was on the medical staffs of the Indianapolis City Hospital and City Dispensary (1882), the Marion County Asylum, and the Indiana Institute for the Education of the Blind.
He was a member of the pension bureau examining-board at Indianapolis, 1885-95, and in 1895 was appointed surgeon-general of the state militia with the grade of colonel. He contributed occasional papers to journal literature, perhaps the most notable being "Etiology of Specific Disease", a discourse in opposition to the idea of the bacterial causation of disease.
His many outside activities, however, took toll of his clientele, and in his later years he added real estate promotion to a precarious practice, with scant success in either.
He died in his office, probably a suicide, from asphyxiation by gas.
Richard French Stone participated in the founding of the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons, at Indianapolis, in which he held the chair of materia medica, therapeutics, and clinical medicine. He also was the publisher of Elements of Modern Medicine, and Biography of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons. The last remains one of the best available sources of information for the biographer of American medical men.
He took a lively interest in the activities of the Grand Army of the Republic and in local Democratic politics.
An associate described him as being quiet and reserved, marked by a diffidence that interfered seriously with any activities involving public contacts.
He was married on November 24, 1869, to Matilda C. Long, daughter of Dr. William Long of New Maysville, Indiana, by whom he had one son.
