Abstract
Any person who saved the life of George Washington deserves to be remembered 200 or so years later, but this was not Samuel Bard's only claim to immortality.
Father John Bard was in medical practice in Philadelphia when Samuel Marmion was born on 1 April 1742, but the family with four children soon moved to New York City where father John co-founded The Bellevue Hospital. Samuel 1 received his medical training at St Thomas' Hospital, London, and at Edinburgh where he received his MD diploma (1765). He married his cousin Mary Bard (1770), became physician to the New York Hospital (1774), Professor of Chemistry at Columbia College (1784) and its Dean (1792), Governor of New York Hospital (1801), Trustee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons (1807) and its President (1811). This brief profile is sufficient to underline the magnitude his influence had on the growth of health matters in the emerging New York. In 1789 George Washington was seized with fever due to a carbuncle of his left thigh on which Samuel Bard operated successfully on 17 June.
Sam Bard and David Hosack planned a botanic garden for central Manhattan extending from 47th to 51st Street with a border on Fifth Avenue but it failed because of lack of support. It would surely in that area have become the wealthiest garden in the world.
Sam Bard retired to his countryseat, the Red House, that he had built in Hyde Park where he could continue his love of botany. He died there on 24 May 1821 within a day of his wife's death and they were buried together in a single grave in the park.