NINTH GENERATION

412. Doctor Thomas Bond ^{(42) (101)} was born on May 2 1713 in Herring Creek, Calvert County, Maryland. He died on Mar 26 1784 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dr. Thomas Bond was one of the most distinguished American physicians of the eighteenth century and holds a major place in the history of medicine. He studied medicine as an apprentice, as was then customary. But, contrary to what is frequently stated, he did not study under Dr. Alexander Hamilton of Annapolis, Maryland's most celebrated doctor of his day. Hamilton was born in 1712, only a year earlier than Bond. Bond probably apprenticed in Philadelphia and finished his studies in Europe, primarily in Paris, beginning in 1738, one of the first American physicians to study abroad.

He moved to Philadelphia probably in 1730 with his half brother, Dr. Samuel Chew (the grandfather of the distinguished jurist Benjamin Chew), and began practicing medicine there about 1734. He opened a shop that year with Samuel Chew on Market Street, selling drugs and other medicinal items. The following year he married his first wife, Susannah Roberts, the daughter of the Mayor of Philadelphia. But he was very soon widowed. Although Bond was born and raised a Quaker, his second wife was an Anglican and he joined that church at the time of his second marriage.

While primarily a physician, he was also a skilled surgeon, performing many amputations and operations for bladder stones, including one on a child of four. His reputation as a surgeon was wide spread and patients came from great distances to avail themselves of his services. Robert Treat Paine came from Boston to be inoculated against smallpox, and Caesar Rodney, a signer of the declaration of Independence, came from Delaware to have a cancer removed from his face. He introduced many innovations in the care of the sick, including a splint, still called a Bond splint, for fractures of the lower arm. Dr. Benjamin Rush ascribed to Bond the first use of mercury for medicinal purposes in this country.

Bond was the driving force behind the founding of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the United States, and his part in the undertaking is extensively discussed in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. In his Autobiography, Franklin describes Bond as "a particular friend of mine." He was a founder and a member of the board of trustees of the College of Philadelphia, the forerunner of the University of Pennsylvania and helped to found its medical school in 1765, the first medical school in the New World. The following year he delivered the first course of clinical lectures on medicine ever given in what is now the United States. He was also a founder of the school's library, the first medical library in the American colonies.

According to Elizabeth H. Thomson, "his lecture inaugurating clinical instruction . . . has been repeatedly reprinted. Continuing interest in this lecture for nearly 200 years testifies to the soundness of Bond's proposal to teach medicine at the bedside--a method subsequently abandoned, then reinstated a century later, and still a basic principle in medical education."

With his brother Phineas, with whom he shared his practice, and Franklin, he founded the American Philosophical Society in 1743. In 1768, when it was reorganized, he served as its vice president, while Franklin was its president. He acted as its president during the years Franklin was abroad on diplomatic missions. On May 21 1782 he delivered the Society's annual oration, on "The Rank and Dignity of Man in the Scale of Being." He was also a Mason, serving as Deputy Grand Master of St. John's Masonic Lodge under Franklin in 1749 and as Senior Grand Warden of the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge in 1755. he was also a member of the Fishing Company of Fort St. David's.

Dr. Bond lived on Second Street, between Chestnut and Walnut Streets, and kept a carriage to facilitate the making of house calls. he also owned 120 acres in the Northern Liberties of the city, with a small country house. The tax rolls of 1772 reveal that there were seven horses, ten cows, twenty sheep, and two slaves on the place. In 1781, he bought Kinderton, the country place of Rebecca Venables, who seems to have helped raise his wife and who left the Bonds and their children most of her possessions when she died in 1784.

In 1776 he volunteered his services to the Committee of Safety and helped in the organization of the Continental Army. In 1780 he helped found the Humane Society of Philadelphia, the first such society in the United States, and served as its president.

He is buried in the church yard of Christ Church in Philadelphia, and the Pennsylvania Gazette of Apr 3 1784 reported that his burial had "such an attendance of his fellow citizens, as was due to the memory of a gentleman, who had gone through life inoffensively to all men; with good humour and kindness to the whole circle of his acquaintance, and with fidelity and affection to his friends." Dr. William Shippen reported that "32 D[octor]s & 22 medical pupils attended the funeral & a vast number of citizens."

By the terms of his will his two slaves were freed upon the death of his wife.

An article on Dr. Thomas Bond appears in the Dictionary of American Biography, the Encyclopedia of American Biography, the American National BIography, and Patriot-Improvers: Biographical Sketches of Members of the American Philosophical Society. There is also an article on him, "Thomas Bond, 1713-1784, First Professor of Clinical Medicine in the American Colonies" by Elizabeth H. Thomson, in the Journal of Medical Education, Vol. 33 (1958), pp. 614-624. A biography of him, by Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., is in preparation. He was married to Sarah Weyman after Oct 31 1742 in probably Burlington, New Jersey.

413. Sarah Weyman ⁽¹⁰²⁾ died in Sep 1785 in probably Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Children were:

206 i. Doctor Thomas Bond.

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