Cadwalader Evans (86)

Election date: 1768 (Elected to the American Society in 1768. Elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1768.)

Cadwalader Evans (1716–30 June 1773) was a physician and educator, and a member of the American Philosophical Society. Elected to the American Society in 1768, he refused election to the APS for political reasons that same year but then served on the committee that oversaw the two institutions’ unification in 1769. Born in Gwynedd, near Philadelphia, he was a friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin and a supporter of the anti-proprietary party. He studied medicine under founder APS Thomas Bond, Sr., before sailing to England in 1748, presumably to attend Edinburgh University. His ship was captured by a Spanish privateer, however, and he was taken to La Española (modern Haiti) where he contracted a severe fever. He was eventually permitted to travel to nearby Jamaica where a community of Quakers convinced him to settle. In 1753 he finally arrived in Britain, where he witnessed electrical experiments by Franklin. Neglecting to take a degree at Edinburgh, Evans returned to Philadelphia in 1756 and, three years later, was appointed a physician of the Pennsylvania Hospital. There, he successfully proposed that student fees (usually paid to hospital managers) be used to purchase books for a proposed library, which would become the largest medical library in the antebellum U.S. During this time he also served as a physician to the Almshouse and practiced privately, attending patients alongside APS member Dr. John Redman. Encouraged by Franklin, Evans was a founding member of the Society for Encouraging the Culture of Silk. He was also a member of the Union Library Company and the Library Company of Philadelphia. Late in life, he formed a medical partnership with his kinsman Dr. Thomas Parke and recommended his former apprentice James Hutchinson for the post of Hospital apothecary; both were APS members, as was his brother Rowland Evans. (PI)

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