Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Rush 1745?-1813, American physician, signer of the Declaration of Independence, b. Byberry (now part of Philadelphia), Pa., grad. College of New Jersey (now Princeton), 1760, M.D. Univ. of Edinburgh, 1768. On his return to America (1769) he became professor of chemistry, the first in the colonies, at the College of Philadelphia. A member of the Continental Congress (1776-77), he served for a time in the Continental Army. In 1786 he established in Philadelphia the first free dispensary in the United States. He was a member of the Pennsylvania convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. In 1792 he became professor of the institutes of medicine and clinical practice at the Univ. of Pennsylvania (which had absorbed the College of Philadelphia), later becoming professor of theory and practice. His reliance upon the bleeding and purging of patients, particularly in the yellow-fever epidemic of 1793 (in which he worked heroically), aroused a bitter controversy. Popular as a teacher, he made notable contributions to psychiatry, was a founder of the first American antislavery society, and helped in the founding of Dickinson College. From 1797 to his death he was treasurer of the U.S. mint at Philadelphia. Rush Medical College, Chicago, was named for him. His principal writings were Medical Inquiries and Observations (5 vol., 1794-98), Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical (1798), and Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812).

Bibliography: See his letters (ed. by L. H. Butterfield, 1951); autobiography (ed. by G. W. Corner, 1948); biography by D. F. Hawke (1971).

Rush, Benjamin (1746–1813), physician, medical educator, signer of the Declaration of Independence.Born near Philadelphia, Benjamin Rush earned his bachelor's degree from the College of New Jersey (Princeton) at age fourteen. He did a medical apprenticeship in Philadelphia and then continued his medical education at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, receiving his degree there in 1768. When Rush began his medical practice in Philadelphia in 1769, the College of Philadelphia appointed him the first native‐born American professor of chemistry.

Outspokenly patriotic, Rush in 1776 took his seat with the Pennsylvania delegation in the Second Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence, later becoming surgeon‐general of the Middle Department of the Continental Army. In 1786, Rush opened the first medical dispensary in the United States and in 1787 helped found the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Rush assumed the chair of theory and practice of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in 1796.

Rush theorized that all disease arose from convulsive action in the blood vessels, which he treated by purging and bleeding his patients, and inducing vomiting. Rush's theory became famous after 1793 when a yellow fever epidemic carried off about one‐tenth of Philadelphia's population. While others fled, Rush stayed behind to administer his controversial treatments to hundreds. His devotion made him a popular hero. In 1813, ill with fever, Rush had himself bled twice before dying at home in Philadelphia.

Rush's prolific writings made him the first American physician to become widely known both at home and abroad. He established the reputation of Philadelphia, where he taught some three thousand medical students, as a center for medical training. He campaigned to make public schools free, broaden education for women, and humanize the treatment of mental patients. Rush also opposed slavery and capital punishment and in widely distributed tracts advocated temperance in the use of alcohol.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Medicine: From 1776 to the 1870s; Revolution and Constitution, Era of; Temperance and Prohibition.

Bibliography

Carl Alfred Lanning Binger , Revolutionary Doctor: Benjamin Rush, 1746–1813, 1966.
Claire G. Fox,, Gordon L. Miller,, and Jacquelyn C. Miller,, and compilers , Benjamin Rush, M.D.: A Bibliographic Guide, 1996.

Robert B. Sullivan