I’ve been fascinated by Benjamin Rush ever since as a grade schooler, I realized that there was a signature on the Declaration of Independence with the same last name as mine, Rush. Rush is not the commonest of last names. Of course, I fantasized that he might be a direct ancestor or other relation. At that time there had not been a lot of genealogy done on my family. Since then I have discovered that we are related, not closely, but related. We are 3rd cousins 6 generations removed. We share a common ancestor, Capt. John “Old Trooper” Rush. What is interesting about John Rush is that he was a captain in Oliver Cromwell’s army. If you remember your English history, Cromwell briefly established a republic in Great Britain in the 1650s. Capt. Rush later immigrated to the Pennsylvania colony.
There are several reasons that Benjamin Rush has been assigned to the second tier of founding fathers. Stephen Fried in his book Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, argues that this is an injustice. In fact John Adams, the second President of the United States is quoted as saying “Dr Rush was a greater and better Man than Dr Franklin: Yet Rush was always persecuted and Franklin always adored. … Rush has done infinitely more good to America than Franklin. Both had deserved a high Rank among Benefactors to their Country and Mankind; but Rush by far the highest.“
Perhaps the most fundamental reason he was put somewhat aside was due to his own fault. He ended up on George Washington’s bad side after starting out as Washington’s friend. Rush was an impatient man who became frustrated at the care given his patients in colonial army hospitals and the pace of the war. He wrote a letter to Washington asking for some changes in the care of his soldiers. Washington, being somewhat busy, took longer to reply than Rush liked. Additionally, having been in a campaign with General Gates, Rush thought Gates a better general and should replace Washington. Rush wrote what was essentially a poison pen letter to Patrick Henry about Washington. That letter came to Washington’s attention. Their relationship was never the same again, and neither was Rush’s position in history. Rush’s son Richard was a politician serving as a Cabinet member for several Presidents and even running for Vice President with John Quincy Adams. He suppressed much of his father’s writings as he felt it would hurt his political career. Rush’s medical training was at a time when bleeding was the preferred treatment for almost all ailments. The controversy over this treatment, tarnished his reputation as a doctor during a yellow fever plague in Philadelphia. This also help lead to his becoming a back bencher of Founding Fathers.
My goal with this blog article is to entice you to read this wonderfully written biography of a little known Founding Father.
A list of the Benjamin Rush’s accomplishments would include:
- A signer of the Declaration of Independence
- His father-in-law, Richard Stockton, was another signer of the Declaration of Independence.
- Each colony also had their own Declaration of Independence. Rush wrote the one for Pennsylvania
- He was a protégé of Benjamin Franklin
- He was with George Washington crossing the Delaware (although at a different spot than Washington), providing medical care to his troops.
- He was a surgeon general for the colonial army and an advisor to Washington on medical matters regarding the army.
- He was an early proponent of public education in the colonies
- He was the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA. The college is still going strong today.
- While not on the committee that wrote our current constitution, he knew and conversed with many of the men who were. It can be argued that due to his influence we have this verbiage in Article 6 of the Constitution, “But no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” What is interesting about that is that he was a devotedly Christian man, but also devotedly believed in the separation of church and state.
- Through his work in the Pennsylvania Legislature, he was instrumental in getting the new US Constitution passed.
- From their first meeting in 1774 at the Colonial Congress Benjamin Rush and John Adams became fast friends. For the next 39 years, until Rush passed away, they maintained a frequent and intimate correspondence. When, for brief periods, they were in the same town, they were frequent visitors in each other’s home.
- Rush also maintained a long and varied correspondence with Thomas Jefferson. Besides politics, they shared many scientific interests.
- Jefferson and Adams had a falling out, and for many years did not communicate. It was due to the intercession of Rush, that these two Founding Fathers began corresponding again. Much of what we know of this period about these men has been extracted from the letters between the two. Much of what we know about Adams has been extracted from his correspondence with Rush.
- All these letters may also have contributed to his back benching, as both Jefferson and Adams separately wanted some of the letters suppressed or returned. They both had been very intimate with the doctor on issues that they did not wish to be made public.
- Rush was instrumental in motivating Thomas Paine to write Common Sense. He was also instrumental in getting it published. Paine and Rush would later fall out of favor with each, mainly due to Paine’s free thinking (atheist) ideas.
- While a student in Edinburgh, he was instrumental in bringing a new president to Princeton (then the College of New Jersey), John Whipple. Whipple was key in leading the then young school for the next 26 years.
- The military buzz cut… he promoted this for hygienic and comfort reasons
- He was not the first to observe that more men died from camp related issues than died in battle, but he tried to do something about it. He wrote a pamphlet to address the many issues of military hygiene. It stayed in use for many decades.
- He was an early abolitionist and wrote one of the earliest pamphlets on the subject ever published in the colonies. This did not endear him to large segments of population. Human beings, being the complex creatures they are, he owned a slave for a period of his life. He did later give him his freedom, but only after making money off of him by renting him out as a sailor.
- He was an early opponent of capital punishment
- Being a friend of Thomas Jefferson, he became the de facto medical director of the Lewis and Clark expedition. He gave them much advice, and helped them procure the proper medical items for their “trip”.
- He was known as the “American Hippocrates”.
- He taught at the medical school in Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania, thus training several generations of doctors in the young country.
- He was one of the founders of what was later to become the American Medical Association.
- His medical writings become the de facto medical textbooks in America for many decades.
- Early in his career he became interested in mental health issues. He promoted the idea that it was a medical problem and not demonic possession (or from other strange causes). He improved conditions for mental patients at Pennsylvania Hospital where he was on the staff. He would later become the director of the mental wing of the hospital. During this period it was common to warehouse the mentally ill. They were frequently not treated as well as many animals. He did all this before his own son became a long term patient in this same hospital due his mental health issues.
- He is known as the father of American psychiatry. He was on the forefront of this issue globally.
- He wrote the original American textbook of psychiatry.
- He was early proponent of liquor control. He traced the issues of many of his mental patients back to alcohol abuse. Interestingly enough he was only opposed to distilled spirits. This was probably due to the fact, that wine and small beer were essential medical treatments of the time.
- Rush Medical College and Rush University in Chicago are named after Benjamin Rush
- “The funeral of Benjamin Rush is something that almost every civic group sent people to. It was described in the newspapers as being second only to [George] Washington’s burial and [Benjamin] Franklin’s burial. So Rush was not only one of the last of the signers of the Declaration who was still alive, but he was the most important doctor in America. So this was a very big thing.” ~` from NPR story linked to below
Just as an aside, I would have hated being a doctor in this period. There was generally no knowledge as to the causes of diseases. Mostly what physicians could provide was palliative care or emergency measures for cuts, wounds, broken bones, etc. One of the most common treatments, bloodletting, was a holdover from the ancient Greeks. It was based on their medical theory of bodily “humours”.
Hopefully, this list, which is not exhaustive, will motivate you to read Stephen Fried’s book. If you are lover of history, especially of the colonial period this is a must read.
Links:
NPR story — Rush’: The Other Founding Father From Philadelphia Named Benjamin