Gunning S. Bedford

Medical writer and teacher, b. at Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., of a distinguished family in 1806; d. in New York, 5 September, 1870. He was a nephew and namesake of Gunning Bedford, first Attorney-General of Delaware and one of the framers of the Constitution of the United States, who was aide-de-camp to General Washington and was appointed by him U.S. Judge for the District of Delaware. Dr. Bedford graduated in 1825 at Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg, Maryland, and took his degree in medicine from Rutgers College, New York. He spent two years in foreign study and in 1833, when only twenty-six years of age, became professor of obstetrics in Charleston Medical College. From here he accepted a professorship in the Albany Medical College. He went to New York in 1836 and four years later founded the University Medical College, which became a great success. In connection with it he established an obstetrical clinic for those too poor to pay a doctor's fee. This was the first of its kind in the country and was of great service to the poor and to medical science. Dr. Bedford continued to teach until his health broke down in 1862 and he died in 1870. His funeral panegyric was preached by Archbishop McCloskey who had been his fellow student at Mount St. Mary's. Two books written by him, "Diseases of Women" and "Practice of Obstetrics" went through many editions, were translated into French and German, and were adopted as textbooks in American schools.

Medical Record, files (New York, 1870), p. 330; Cyclopaedia of American Biography, s. v.

JAMES J. WALSH