37. Benjamin Rush

It is not often that a man, however gifted, is capable of rising to eminence in two distinct branches of public life, especially in two so widely separated from each other as medicine and politics. The subject of this sketch was one of the few who have achieved such distinction.

Benjamin Rush was born on Poquestion Creek, near Philadelphia, on the 24th of December, 1745. He was carefully educated at the best common schools of his native county, and then entered Princeton College, where he graduated in 1760, at the age of fifteen. He decided, upon leaving Princeton, to adopt medicine as his vocation, and began his studies in Philadelphia. He gave nine years to preparing himself for his profession, and after completing his course in Philadelphia, sailed for Europe, where he continued his studies in Edinburgh, London, and Paris. He returned home in 1769, and began the practice of medicine in Philadelphia, and was at once elected Professor of Chemistry in the medical college of that city. He was successful in rapidly acquiring a large and lucrative practice, and experienced very few of the difficulties and trials which lie in the way of a young physician.

In 1770 he began his career as an author, and for many years his writings were numerous. He devoted himself chiefly to medical subjects, but history, philosophy, and politics, and even romance, frequently claimed his attention. He adopted the patriot cause at the outset of his career, and with his pen and voice constantly advocated resistance to the injustice of Great Britain. This drew upon him the attention of his fellow-citizens, and he was chosen to a seat in the Provincial Conference of Pennsylvania. In that body he introduced a resolution setting forth the necessity of a declaration of independence of the mother country. His resolution was referred to a committee, of which he was made the chairman, and this committee having reported affirmatively, the resolution was unanimously adopted by the Conference, and was communicated to the Continental Congress, then in session in Philadelphia, about the last of June, 1776. When it became evident that the Congress would declare the independence of the colonies, five members of the Pennsylvania delegation withdrew from that body. Their places were at once supplied by Rush and four others, and when the Declaration was finally adopted Benjamin Rush affixed his signature to it as a delegate from Pennsylvania.

In 1776 Dr. Rush was married to Miss Julia Stockton, daughter of Richard Stockton, of New Jersey, also a signer of the Declaration. In April, 1777, he was made Surgeon-General of the Continental army for the Middle Department, and in July, 1777, was made Physician-General. He devoted himself to his duties with energy and intelligence, and succeeded in placing the affairs of his department in as satisfactory a condition as the means at the command of the Congress would permit. He was not able, however, to arrange every thing as his judgment assured him was best, and was subjected to many annoyances and great inconvenience by the incompetence and mismanagement of other officials, whom he could not control. The management of the hospital supplies of the army was especially defective, and was the cause of much suffering to the troops. He made repeated efforts to effect a reform in this particular, but failing to accomplish any thing, and indignant at the wrongs inflicted upon the soldiers, he resigned his commission and retired to private life.

During his connection with the army, he had watched the course of affairs in his native State with the keenest interest, and in a series of four letters to the people of Pennsylvania, called their attention to the serious defects of their Constitution of 1776, the chief of which he declared to be the giving of the legislative power to one house only. His appeals had the effect of bringing about an entire change in the form of State government, which was subsequently accomplished by a general convention of the people. After the close of the war Dr. Rush was elected a member of the State Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States, and distinguished himself in that body by his earnest and brilliant advocacy of that instrument. He was also a member of the convention which adopted a new State Constitution, embodying the reforms he had advised in the letters referred to, and labored hard to have incorporated in it his views respecting a penal code and a public school system, both of which features he ably advocated through the public press.

With this closed his public career, which, though brief, was brilliant, and raised him to a proud place among the fathers of the Republic.

Returning to Philadelphia after resigning his position in the army, he resumed the practice of medicine, and with increased success. His personal popularity and his great skill as a physician brought him all the employment he could desire, and he soon took his place at the head of the medical faculty of the country.

In 1785 he planned the Philadelphia Dispensary, the first institution of the kind in the United States, and to the close of his life remained its warm and energetic supporter. In 1789 he was made Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in the Philadelphia Medical College, and when that institution was merged in the University, in 1791, he was elected to the chair of the Institute and Clinical Medicine. In 1797 he took the professorship of Clinical Practice also, as it was vacant, and was formally elected to it in 1805. These three professorships he held until the day of his death, discharging the duties of each with characteristic brilliancy and fidelity.

The great professional triumph of his life occurred in the year 1793. In that year the yellow fever broke out with great malignancy in Philadelphia, and raged violently for about one hundred days, from about the last of July until the first of November. Nothing seemed capable of checking it. The people fled in dismay from their homes, and the city seemed given over to desolation. In the terrible "hundred days," during which the fever prevailed, four thousand persons died, and the deaths occurred so rapidly that it was frequently impossible to bury the bodies for several days. The physicians of the city, though they remained heroically at their posts, and labored indefatigably in their exertions to stay the plague, were powerless against it, and several of them were taken sick and died. Few had any hope of checking the fever, and every one looked forward with eagerness to the approach of the season of frosts, as the only means of saving those that remained in the stricken city.

Contents