Benjamin Franklin Bache (February 7, 1801–November 1, 1881) was a surgeon in the United States Navy before and during the Civil War. He was a great-grandson of the Revolutionary War statesman and author, Benjamin Franklin.
Bache was born in Monticello, Virginia, graduating from Princeton University in 1819, and from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1823.
He entered the Navy as an assistant surgeon in 1824, and in 1828 was promoted to the rank of surgeon. From 1838 to 1841 he served as fleet surgeon of the Mediterranean Squadron. simultaneously serving as professor of natural science at Kenyon College, Ohio.
Bache was in charge of the Philadelphia Naval Asylum from 1845 to 1847. He then served as fleet surgeon of the Brazil Squadron from 1848 to 1860, and at the Naval Hospital in New York from 1850 to 1854, serving as director of the medical laboratory of the Brooklyn Navy Yard from 1855 to 1872. During the Civil War, the laboratory provided medical supplies to the Union army. Bache retired on February 1, 1868, and in 1871 was appointed medical director with rank of Commodore.
Commodore Bache died at his home on 283 Henry Street, New York, after a short illness on November 1, 1881.
Famous quotes containing the words benjamin franklin, benjamin and/or franklin:
“Opportunity is the great bawd.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)
“The book borrower of real stature whom we envisage here proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures and by the deaf ear which he turns to all reminders from the everyday world of legality as by his failure to read these books.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“Furnished as all Europe now is with Academies of Science, with nice instruments and the spirit of experiment, the progress of human knowledge will be rapid and discoveries made of which we have at present no conception. I begin to be almost sorry I was born so soon, since I cannot have the happiness of knowing what will be known a hundred years hence.”
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790)