Hyde Park Post Office Mural Panel 6. From "Murals in the Hyde Park, New York Post Office," published by Town of Hyde Park Historical Society: In the late 1780s. Dr. John Bard and Dr. Samuel Bard examine their new Italian melons, fertilized with gypsum. The latter's pockets bulge, as usual, with plants. A flock of wild pigeons fly across the sky. These two men were New York's most distinguished physicians-- Dr. John, a friend of Benjamin Franklin and a member of his Club, was the firs president of the New York Medical Society; with Dr. Peter Middleton performed the first dissection for instruction and the first diagnosis of and successful operation for extra-uterine pregnancy recorded in the colonies. As. . . public health officer he fought yellow fever and recommended the purchase of Bedloe's Island as quarantine station. Dr. Samuel, who studied in Edinborough (sic), was on his return instrumental in founding the Medical School of Kings College, later the College of Physicians and Surgeons [and] was its first professor of medicine and President. He also was the first to agitate for a hospital. He encouraged the local use of clover as a crop as well as other horticultural improvements and was first president of the Society of Dutchess County for the Promotion of Agriculture (1806). Although Loyalists, the Bards were highly respected by both sides, Dr. Samuel taking care of President Washington in 1789 with Dr. John as consultant." In a manuscript for a pamphlet on the Rhinebeck murals, Helen Myers describes Dr. Samuel Bard's interest in animal husbandry. Bard and Chancellor Robert Livingston attempted to improve local wool production by experimenting with the interbreeding of domestic sheep with the "fluffy" Merino variety, imported from France and Spain. Bard described his findings in an 1811 text titled "Advice for Young Shepherds; of Facts and Observations on the Character and Value of Merino Sheep: With Rules and Precepts for their Management, and the Treatment of their Diseases, as Well as of Sheep in ...