He began de study of medicine in Philadelphia and completed his 
        course in London. About 1731 he returned to Philadelphia and continued 
        his profession there for fifteen years. During the winter of of 
        1736-37 he is mentioned as one of the physicians that inoculated for 
        the smallpox. 
              In 1746 he removed to Trenton, New Jersey, but in 1750 returned 
        to Philadelphia. He subscribed in 1751 toward the capital stock of the 
        Pennsylvania hospital, of which he became one of the original 
        physicians, and in the same year was elected a member of the common 
        council, in which he served until 1774. Dr. Cadwalader was called to 
        the provincial council on 2 November 1755, and signed the 
        non-importation articles. 
             In July 1776, the committee of safety of Pennsylvania appointed 
        him on a committee for the examination of all candidates that applied 
        for the post of surgeon in the navy, and at the same time he was 
        appointed a medical director of the army hospitals. In 1778 he 
        succeeded the elder William Shippen as surgeon of the Pennsylvania 
        hospital, and previously, in 1765, had been elected trustee of the 
        Medical college of Philadelphia, where he gave a course of lectures. 
             Dr. Cadwalader was a member of the American philosophical society 
        and the American society for promoting useful knowledge before their 
        union in 1769. He was one of the original corporators of the 
        Philadelphia library company in 1731. It is reported that he saved the 
        life of a son of Governor Jonathan Belcher by the application of 
        eclectricity before 1750, and he published an "Essay on the West India 
        Dry Gripes" (1745). Its purpose was to prove that quicksilver and 
        drastic purgatives were highly injurious to the system. 
 

Source: "Famous Americans" Appletons Encyclopedia.