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Rush, Benjamin

Benjamin Rush

Achievements: 18th-century American physician, teacher, social reformer and politician, who was elected to the Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence.

Born: January 4, 1746 (24 December 1745, Old Style); Bayberry, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Died: April 19, 1813; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Aged 67)

Field & Discipline: Medicine; Physician

Language: English

Father: John Rush

Mother: Susanna Hall Harvey

Siblings: None

Spouse: Julia Stockton (m. 1776)

Children: Thirteen children, nine surviving infancy (three daughters and six sons)

Education: Nottingham Academy (1754-59); College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) (1759-60); College of Philadelphia (1761-66); University of Edinburgh (1766-68)

Major Work:

“Medical Inquiries and Observations” (1805, 4 vols)

Life & Times:

In 1766, keen to obtain the best medical education then available, Rush sailed for Scotland, where he continued his studies at the University of Edinburgh. At Edinburgh, keeping to a deal made with John Morgan (who promised to support Rush's future candidacy for the post of professor of chemistry at Philadelphia if he studied chemistry as well as medicine), he attended lectures by the chemist [taught by] Black*and the anatomist [taught by] Monro*, and became the close friend and disciple of the highly respected physician [a pal of] Cullen*, whose ideas were to have a profound effect on the development of Rush's theoretical approach to medicine.

Rush completed his thesis "On the Digestion of Food in the Stomach" in 1768, the results of which were based in part on self-experimentation, and received his medical degree from Edinburgh the same year. He then moved to London, where he spent several months training at St. Thomas's Hospital, attending dissections by [taught by] William Hunter*, and visiting [a pal of] Benjamin Franklin*, who persuaded him to take (and helped finance) a trip to Paris, early in 1769.

Rush returned to Philadelphia in the summer of 1769, was appointed professor of chemistry at the College of Philadelphia, and spent the following year constructing a chemistry course based on the lectures of Joseph Black, and writing the first American textbook on chemistry for his students based on these lectures: “A Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry” (1770).

On 20 July 1776 he was elected to the Continental Congress by the constitutional convention of Pennsylvania. On 22 July he took his seat in the Second Continental Congress, and on 2 August signed the Declaration of Independence.  In February 1777, following the declaration of war with Britain, Rush lost his seat, but was soon after appointed surgeon-general, and later physician-general, of the Middle Department of the Continental Army. Rush found the system of army hospitals plagued by disorganization and corruption, and after making a series of very public complaints first to his superiors, and then to their superiors and to Congress.

Rush returned to Philadelphia, where he devoted himself to teaching and his medical practice. In 1780, he began lecturing in clinical medicine at the new University of the State of Pennsylvania, and in 1784 he was appointed surgeon to the Pennsylvania Hospital, a post he kept until his death.  During the 1780s, Rush's lectures in chemistry and medicine began to attract students from across America, and in 1789 he was appointed professor of theory and practice of medicine at the College of Philadelphia.

Meanwhile he was becoming an increasingly important public figure, helping found and govern Dickinson College in Carlisle (1783) and Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (1787), and in 1786 establishing the Philadelphia Dispensary to provide medical care for the poor.   He also campaigned to make public schools free, to broaden education for women, and to create a school system that included universities.

In 1787 he co-founded the College of  Physicians of Philadelphia, and the same year, he was elected to the Pennsylvania ratifying convention for the new Federal Constitution.

During the 1790s he began lecturing on his unitary theory of disease,  based on the radical ideas of William Cullen and his student John Brown.  Cullen based his medical practice on changes in nervous energy and stimulation of the nervous system, while Brown had modified his master's teachings into a highly simple theory of disease based on the diagnosis of one of two physiological conditions - either excessive or inadequate nervous stimulation.   Excess stimulation required therapeutic depletion by purging, vomiting or bloodletting, while inadequate stimulation called for changes to diet,  or the taking of brandy. Taking Brown's ideas a step further, Rush then reduced all disease to a single cause, "irregular convulsive or wrong action in the system affected."   

In this unitary theory of disease, the "excited" nervous state common to  all life had only two forms - healthy and morbid.  Morbid excitement was  caused by convulsive action in the blood vessels, which caused symptoms ranging from fever to insanity and required a single cause: immediate depletion by bloodletting and purges (the worse the disease, the more extreme the treatment) in order to restore the body's balance.

Meanwhile, Rush's therapeutic theories had already been severely tested during 1793, when Philadelphia saw its worst yellow fever epidemic to date. Between early August and November, tens of people were dying by the day (altogether 4,000-5,000 residents of Philadelphia, about one-tenth of its population), and Rush accordingly began his "depletion" treatments, consisting of heavy doses of purgatives combined with bloodletting.  Rush was particularly criticized by the newspaper editor [criticized by] Cobbett*, who later called Rush's practice "one of those great discoveries which have contributed to the depopulation of the earth."  He finally resigned from the College of Physicians in protest at the condemnation of his methods in 1797. 

However Rush continued as a prominent teacher, writer and social reformer in Philadelphia, who could count such eminent men as [a colleague of]Benjamin Franklin*, [a pal of] Thomas Paine*, [a pal of] Jefferson*, [a pal of] John Quincy Adams*, [a pal of] Noah Webster*, [a pal of] Silliman Snr.* and Patrick Henry among his close friends. He was also prominent as an anti-slavery and anti-capital punishment campaigner, and as an early founder of the American temperance movement. In 1797, by appointment of President Adams, Rush was made treasurer of the U.S. Mint, a post he held until his death.

Extra Connections: He was a colleague of [a colleague of] George Washington*

For his advice during an epidemic, he was awarded a gold medal by Queen [awarded medal by]Maria Louisa of Etruria*

Assessment: A major figure in early American medicine.

Oneliner: Benjamin Rush, early American doctor

Bibliography:

Wikipedia

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AMERICAN CONNECTIONS

BENJAMIN RUSH (PA) was thirty. And newlywed. And

made enemies by whistle-blowing on the corruption in wartime military

hospitals. After originally qualifying in Scotland, Rush wrote the first

U.S. chemistry textbook, became prof. of medical theory and practice in

Philadelphia, and when the city was hit with the great Yellow Fever

Plague in 1793 saved hundreds (and killed a few, too) with his

enthusiastic bloodletting treatment. His influence on U.S. medicine was

major, not least because he taught over three thousand students.

In 1792 Rush tried and failed to set up a "Peace Office" in an attempt

to demilitarize American society (he wanted the U.S. War Office door to

carry the notice: "An office for butchering the human species"). These

ideas were publicized in the 1793 almanac written by his pal Ben

Banneker, son of a freed slave and amateur astronomer, surveyor, and

mathematician, who corresponded with Thomas Jefferson on the topics of slavery and racial equality Baneker had started sky-gazing at the late age of fifty-one

with a telescope borrowed from his Maryland neighbors and mill owners

the Ellicotts. The Quaker Ellicott brothers helped revolutionize farming in the area by persuading farmers to plant wheat instead of tobacco and also by introducing fertilizer to revitalize depleted soil.[4] ^Charles^ ^Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was an early influential convert from tobacco to wheat.[5]^

In 1803, President Jefferson engaged Ellicott as a mentor and teacher for Meriwether Lewis, one of the leaders of the Lewis and Clark Expedition that was to start the following year.

In 1790 Major Andrew Ellicott was nominated by George

Washington to survey a ten-square-mile area of land between Virginia and

Maryland for the new national capital.

In 1791 Major Ellicott took Ben with him to start the work. Ellicott was already an experienced surveyor with various state boundaries measured. In 1813 more of the

same work eventually led to his appointment as professor of math at West

Point, where he managed to put studies on a more academic footing.

That same year the academy intake included B. L. E. de Bonneville. His father was a close friend of friend of Condorcet, Lafayette, and Thomas Paine, the latter paying their passage to America. In 1825 de Bonneville ecorted family friend Lafayette on the great man's triumphal good-bye tour of the Unitd States, then in 1832 took time out

from the army to go fur-trapping with the financial backing of J. J.

Astor. De Bonneville headed off up the Oregon Trail into the Rockies,

where he wandered around for three years. In 1837 his journal of the

trip was rewritten by Washington Irving as The Adventures of Captain

Bonneville. At which point de Bonneville got back in uniform.

There's some speculation that he was given military leave of absence

because the real reason for heading northwest was to spy on what the

Brits were up to in Oregon.

As far as Congress was concerned this was a legitimate matter for

snoopery. The area was under joint U.S.-U.K. supervision and both sides

traded competitively with the Native Americans and Russians. Besides

which, everybody knew that the name of the game for the new Hudson's Bay

Company governor, ex-London sugar broker George Simpson, was to spoil

the day of any American traders on the West Coast. To make this easier,

in 1838 Simpson leased the Alaska Peninsula from St. Petersburg.

In 1840 Simpson decided to check out company assets and set off on a

round-the-world tour (London, Sitka, Hawaii, Sitka, St. Petersburg,

London). Because of a worsening vision problem Simpson took along a

seeing-eye secretary, Edward Martin Hopkins. The best thing about whom

was his wife, the beautiful and talented Frances Anne Beechey. Her grandfather was a royal portraitist.

When Mr. Hopkins became head of the Montreal Department of the Hudson's Bay

Company, Frances Anne accompanied him on many inspection trips across

the wilderness, painting as she went. Her work is one of the very few

records of the life of the voyageurs, intrepid canoeists who

manhandled thirty-six-foot freight canoes over white water and through

snowstorms and danger.

Frances Anne's canvases capture with astonishing

beauty the forests, rivers, and people of a time when the great northern

world was empty and untouched.

Her father had his share of the north, too. Fred Beechey spent time in

the Royal Navy, freezing in the Arctic with major explorers Franklin and

Parry, getting trapped in the ice, and being attacked by walruses. He

also surveyed the North African coast, saw military action in America,

and sailed the Pacific for four years. When the time came to retire, his

great experience in tidal matters made him the navy's choice as delegate

to the 1853 first-ever international meteorological conference in

Brussels. Where the Beaufort Wind Scale was adopted.

Francis Beaufort was a weird type who married his own step-niece. After

he died his encrypted letters were deciphered, and they revealed he had

also had an incestuous relationship with his sister Hester. Royal Navy

hydrographer for twenty-six years, Beaufort turned a small naval office

into one of the world's great sources of oceanic data. And his Wind

Scale standardized how all navigators now describe winds: on a range

from from calm (0) to hurricane (12).

Beaufort also okayed the 1839--43 Ross expedition sent to search for the

South Magnetic Pole. Key science tool for the onboard geeks was the

high-tech dipping compass needle invented by Robert Were Fox. Having

been to the bottom of his family's West-of-England mines and discovered

that it got hotter the deeper you went, Fox theorized this had something

to do with metal-bearing rocks, which had something to do with

electricity and magnetism. Hence his needle. Which hung free to dip more

or less, depending on magnetic intensity (theoretically at a Magnetic

Pole it would dip vertically).

Fox's sister Caroline enjoyed her brother's scientific cronies but made

her own influential friends, including Tennyson, Garibaldi, explorer

David Livingstone, and philosopher John Stuart Mill. And wrote about

them all in her (lifelong) journal. Which was full of little

observations like that on Wordsworth: "evidently an admirer of the

monologue style of conversation." Caroline was a sensible and

intelligent woman until she fell head-over-heels for a married man, poet

John Sterling (nothing came of it).

Sterling was an admirer of Coleridge and Wordsworth, went to Germany to

"immerse" himself in the Romantic Movement, married into a Bordeaux wine

company, and was involved in skullduggery for Spanish revolutionary

General Trujillo, providing him and his men with false passports, arms,

and money, and (no fool) being absent when Trujillo's attempted coup

went sour. Sterling's other claim to fame was the Sterling Club, where

diners reputedly indulged in "impious" activity. Alas nothing further is

detailed.

Sterling's prolific output of poems, essays, novels, and general

scribble have, fortunately, long gone from sight but at the time the

stuff impressed people like Caroline Fox. And, in 1843, a visiting,

one-legged American writer on religious matters, Henry James (no, not

that one). By 1847 James was into Free Love and do-your-own-thing

expression and behavior. All this, the subject of sell-out lectures in

New York. In the 1850s James wrote for the New York Tribune

on everything from spiritualism to alcoholism to theology. And any

scandal in the news. In 1874 he created his own little fuss when a

private letter he'd written about marriage, divorce, and sex found its

way into a rag called Wood-hull's and Clafin's Weekly

In 1872 Victoria Woodhull was the first-ever woman candidate for

president. Unfortunately, she was in jail on election day but in any

case got no votes. Victoria had been incarcerated for using the mails to

send obscene material: i.e., her mag containing a report on the

long-running story (she had written earlier that year) about the

holier-than-thou Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, (brother of Uncle Tom's Cabin author Stowe) whose sexual affair with a parishioner's wife Victoria was able to parlay into the greatest brouhaha of nineteenth century America.

Cabinet card of Woodhull by Mathew Brady, 1866–73

Victoria had originally made her pile as a "medical clairvoyant" and hit

the big time in 1868 after arriving in New York (from the Midwest) and

heading straight for Cornelius Vanderbilt. Who was into table-rapping

and whose prostate was given magnetic healing treatment by Victoria's

lovely sister Tennessee. Vanderbilt pointed the sisters at good

investments and they never looked back. He also took their stock advice and made millions. The sisters used their stock profits to buy a newspaper.

As a railroad baron Vanderbilt just got richer and richer. After he

died, selling his shares in the New York Central Railroad took several

years of the best efforts of his banker, J. P. Morgan. Who exercised

more power in America than any elected official. Morgan singlehandedly

saved the country from the Financial Panic of 1907 because he was able

to manipulate financial institutions and markets.

The root of the problem was America's chaotic banking system, so in 1910 something

secret was done about it on Jekyll Island, Georgia. A group of six major

bankers and one Treasury official met (for what was officially described

as a "duck hunt": only first names were used and no records were kept)

to hammer out the structure of what would become the Federal Reserve (a

Central Bank in all but name). Criticized later as a cartel, the Fed

became the ultimate instrument of American financial stability.

One of the groups represented on Jekyll Island was the European banking

firm Kuhn, Loeb & Company. Their man Paul Warburg was the architect of

the event. In 1919 the board of Kuhn, Loeb was joined by aristo Brit Sir

William Wiseman, who had spent World War I as head of British

intelligence in Washington, D.C. Telling his government he had top

American contacts and telling the Americans he had the U.K. government's

ear, he made both come true and was an effective conduit between the two

powers during and after the war.

Wiseman's sidekick in D.C. was London Times America

correspondent Arthur Willert. Whose son Paul also entered the

intelligence game in 1939. Sent to the British propaganda office in

Paris, he worked for Noel Coward, already a major international star and

writer of Private Lives, Cavalcade, Present Laughter, and

such hits as "Dance Little Lady," "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," and "Poor

Little Rich Girl."

Coward's Paris job was to spread disinformation (he

studiously ignored the fact that back home in London the papers were

full of scurrilous stories about him being outrageous at parties with

female Polish spies).

After the Germans took Paris, Coward spent the

rest of the war in London making such classic movies as In Which We

Serve* and *Brief Encounter.

Had the Germans invaded Britain, Coward was scheduled to be arrested and killed, as he was in The Black Book along with other figures such as Virginia Woolf, Paul Robeson, Bertrand Russell, C. P. Snow and H. G. Wells.

Coward's interior decorator was Marion V. Dorn.

By the 1920s known for her batiks, Dorn lived between New York and London, soon began to concentrate on rug design (becoming known as the "architect of floors"),

and developed a long-term relationship with the Wilton Royal Carpet

Company.

By the 1930s Dorn was setting the fashion with such décor

statements as the "all-white" sitting-room for Somerset Maugham's wife,

Syrie. And with her moquette seating fabric (still in use in 1952) for

the London Underground.

From 1919 to 1923 Dorn was married to her ex-tutor at Stanford,

ceramicist Henry Varnum Poor, best known for his murals at the Justice

and Interior buildings in Washington, D.C., and at Penn State

University.

Self-taught as an architect, Poor designed houses or home renovations for Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, John Houseman, Burgess Meredith and Maxwell Anderson.

In 1946 Poor was cofounder of the Skowhegan (Maine) School

of Painting and Sculpture, one of America's foremost artist residency

communities.

In 2005 the School's photo associate was BENJAMIN RUSH.