Benjamin Rush (1745-1813), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the most celebrated American physician and the leading social reformer of his time. He was a close friend of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and corresponded with many of the prominent figures of the revolutionary generation. Rush’s strong belief in universal salvation helped to promote acceptance of Universalism during its formative period in America.
Benjamin Rush was born December 24, 1745 in Bayberry Township near Philadelphia. The fourth of John and Susanna (Hall) Rush’s seven children, Benjamin was raised and spent most of his life in the Philadelphia area. His mother, a Presbyterian, at first supervised her young son’s religious education at home. After the death in 1751 of her Episcopalian husband, she and Benjamin regularly attended the Second Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. There young Rush was greatly influenced by its minister, Gilbert Tennent, a leader in the Great Awakening then sweeping the northeast. Exposure to Calvinist teachings continued during his student years at West Nottingham Academy in Maryland and at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University).
After earning an A.B. in 1760 from the College of New Jersey, Rush studied medicine, 1761-66, under Dr. John Redman in Philadelphia. On Redman’s advice, he continued his studies at the University of Edinburgh, where he received an M.D. degree in 1768. He did further training at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London, 1768-69. In Edinburgh he embraced a new explanation of disease, taught by the prominent instructor, Dr. William Cullen. Rejecting the older theory, based upon the balancing of the four humors, Rush believed that the root cause of disease was “irregular convulsive or wrong action,” especially of the blood vessels.
Returning to America, he joined the faculty of the College of Philadelphia as professor of chemistry. In 1789 he became professor of the theory and practice of medicine. When the college became part of the University of Pennsylvania he was appointed chair of Institutes of Medicine and Clinical Practice, 1791, and chair of Theory and Practice of Medicine, 1796. He was immensely popular with his students; his lectures drew large crowds. His fame drew many students to Philadelphia to study medicine, which he was happy about.
In 1776 he married Julia Stockton; the couple had 13 children, nine of whom survived him. Their son James (1786-1869) followed his father into medicine and wrote notable studies of the human voice and of psychology.
Rush was a delegate to the Continental Congress convened in 1775 and a signer of the Declaration of Independence the following year. During the Revolutionary War he served briefly as surgeon-general of the armies of the Middle Department. Finding the army hospitals corruptly and incompetently managed and frustrated that his office did not give him power to reform them, Rush wrote letters of complaint to Congress and to General George Washington. He resigned after Washington accused him of personal disloyalty. A decade later President John Adams appointed him Treasurer of the United States Mint, a position he held until his death.
As a physician Rush strove to promote the general health of the citizenry. In 1786 he established the first free dispensary in the country. During the great yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia, Rush worked tirelessly and heroically to care for patients and to curb the spread of the disease, at the same time keeping detailed records. In the face of widespread criticism he persisted in promoting drastic purgation and radical bloodletting as a means of treatment. In 1793, Dr. Rush was credited with curing the epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia. The therapy he recommended to restore the circulatory system to normal was bloodletting. There were many people against his practice in this time!
Rush made many contributions to medicine that have stood the test of time. He advocated the simplification of diagnosis and treatment of disease. “Let us strip our profession of everything that looks like mystery and imposture,” he wrote. He was an early advocate of preventive medicine. In particular, he pointed out that decayed teeth were a source of systemic disease. He promoted inoculation and vaccination against smallpox.
A pioneer in the study and treatment of mental illness, Rush insisted that the insane had a right to be treated with respect. He protested the inhuman accommodation and treatment of the insane at Pennsylvania Hospital. When he received an inadequate response to his complaints from the hospital’s Board of Managers, Rush took his case to the public at large. In 1792 he was successful in getting state funding for a ward for the insane. He constructed a typology of insanity which is strikingly similar to the modern categorization of mental illness and studied factors that he thought predisposed people to madness.
Part of Rush’s treatment of the mentally ill was based upon his idea of the cause of physical disease. Anticipating Freudian analysis by over a hundred years, Rush also listened to his patients tell him their troubles and was interested in dreams. He recommended occupational therapy for the institutionalized insane. His Medical Inquiries and Observations, Upon the Diseases of the Mind, 1812, a standard reference for seventy years, earned him the title of “the father of American psychiatry.”
Rush’s shift from Calvinism to universalism was profoundly influenced by the social changes of the Revolutionary era. He embraced republicanism as an essential part of Christianity. For him a world attuned to God would be one which encouraged people to choose virtue over vice. To create this world it would be necessary to improve the conditions under which all the people lived. At first he envisioned the new American republic as playing the leading role in this transformation. Disillusioned by politics, he concluded that the actualization of the this-worldly millennium was a religious task. Rush’s universalism inspired his work as social reformer.
In his time Rush had no peer as a social reformer. Among the many causes he championed-most of them several generations in advance of nearly all other reformers-were prison and judicial reform, abolition of slavery and the death penalty, education of women, conservation of natural resources, proper diet, abstinence from the use of tobacco and strong drink, and the appointment of a “Secretary of Peace” to the federal cabinet. He worked so hard on all these causes that it wore him down to the point of exhaustion.
In 1813 Rush died suddenly after a brief illness. He was buried in the graveyard of Christ’s Church in Philadelphia. On learning of his death Jefferson wrote Adams: “Another of our friends of seventy-six is gone, my dear Sir, another of the co-signers of the Independence of our country. And a better man than Rush could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest.” Adams, grief-stricken, wrote in reply, “I know of no Character living or dead, who has done more real good in America.”
Bibliography
Leitch, Alexander. Benjamin Rush. 1978.
http://etc.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Companion/rush_benjamin.html
Vinci, John. Benjamin Rush.
http://www.colonialhall.com/rush/rush.asp
Unknown Author. Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence.
http://www.benjaminrush.com/
