A native of Greenwich, New Jersey, Wood was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he received his medical degree in 1818.

[1] Four years later he became professor of chemistry in the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, and in 1821 took the chair of materia medica in the same institution, which he resigned in 1835 to accept the same branch in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1863 he was made a member of the board of trustees of the university, and in 1865 he instituted and endowed the summer school with an auxiliary faculty, authorized to confer the degree of doctor of philosophy.

[3] Wood contributed frequently to medical literature, but his reputation as a writer is chiefly based upon his Treatise on Practice, published in 1847, which ran through six editions, the last being in 1867.

Previous to this work, however, he had, with the Dr. Franklin Bache, compiled the Dispensatory of the United States, which first appeared in 1833.