John Wakefield Francis, an American physician and author, born in New York, Nov. 17, 1789, died there, Feb. 8,1861. His father was a German, and his mother of Swiss descent. In his youth he was employed as a printer. Subsequently he entered an advanced class at Columbia college, and graduated A. B. in 1809, and M. D. at the college of physicians and surgeons in 1811, this being the first degree conferred by the latter institution. He was a partner of Dr. Hosack, with whom he had studied medicine, until 1820. In 1813 he was appointed lecturer on the institutes of medicine and materia medica at the college of physicians and surgeons, and soon afterward, the medical faculty of Columbia college having been consolidated with that institution, he received the chair of materia medica in the united body. He would accept no fees for his first course, fearing lest some might bo excluded from the lectures by the expense. In 1816 he went to Europe, and completed his studies under Abernethy. On his return to New York he was appointed professor of the institutes of medicine, and in 1817 of medical jurisprudence.

From 1819 he was professor of obstetrics, in addition to his other duties, until 1826, when the whole faculty resigned, and a majority of them founded the Rutgers medical school, Dr. Francis filling the chair of obstetrics and forensic medicine four years, until the institution was closed by the legislature. Subsequently he devoted himself to practice and the pursuit of literature. In 1810, while yet a student, he prepared with Dr. Hosack the prospectus of the American Medical and Philosophical Register." In 1822-'4 he was one of the editors of the New York Medical and Physical Journal." He actively promoted the objects of the New York historical society, the woman's hospital, the state inebriate asylum, the cause of natural history, the typographical guild, and the fine arts. He was the author of biographical sketches of many distinguished men of his time, and articles in medical periodicals, and published the Use of Mercury (1811),Cases of Morbid Anatomy" (1814),Febrile Contagion" (1816), "Notice of Thomas Eddy the Philanthropist (1823),Denman's Practice of Midwifery" (1825),Letter on Cholera Asphyxia" (1832), "Observations on the Mineral Waters of Avon (1834), the Anatomy of Drunkenness (1841), "A Memoir of Christopher Colles" (1855), and Old New York, or Reminiscences of the past Sixty Years" (1857; republished, with a memoir of the author by H. T. Tuckerman, 1865). He was the first president of the New York academy of medicine in 1847.