Benjamin Rush

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Benjamin Rush, painted by Charles Willson Peale , ca.1818Benjamin Rush signature.png

Benjamin Rush (born December 24, 1745 July / January 4,  1746 greg. In Byberry Township , Province of Pennsylvania , colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain , today USA ; † April 19, 1813 in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , USA) was a British - US -american physician , chemist, writer , teacher and humanist . He founded Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. As one of the signatories of the United States' Declaration of Independence , he is one of the founding fathers of the United States . In addition to his important influence on early American society, Rush is most famous as the man who helped reconcile two of the greatest minds of the young republic in 1812: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams . Benjamin Rush was an early opponent of slavery and the death penalty .

biography

Rush was born in Byberry Township, 14 miles from downtown Philadelphia . The township was annexed to Philadelphia in 1854 and is now a neighborhood. His father died when he was six years old. Rush spent most of his childhood with his maternal uncle, Rev Samuel Finley . He attended Samuel Finley's Academy in Nottingham, which later became the West Nottingham Academy .

Rush earned a bachelor's degree from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University ) and then a medical degree from Edinburgh University . During his time in Europe, he practiced medicine and learned French, Italian and Spanish. When he returned to the Thirteen Colonies in 1769 , he opened a medical practice in Philadelphia and became Professor of Chemistry at the College of Philadelphia.

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It was alleged that before his marriage to Julia Stockton in 1774, Rush was engaged to a Sarah Eve, daughter of gunpowder maker and pro-British loyalist Oswell Eve Sr., who, however, during treatment by a John Redman and the consultation of Rush, died two weeks before the Christmas wedding.

On July 25, 1781 Benjamin Rush and his wife Julia bought a plantation in Oxford Township (now part of Philadelphia); this became their summer residence until they sold it again on December 31, 1792. Facts about the summer home have long been controversial until the recent discovery of an advertisement confirming its ownership and occupation by the Rushs.

“... the improvements consist of a large stone country house, kitchen, & c. suitable for a large family, previously the summer residence of the late Dr. Rush: a stone spring house , a pump with excellent water, half-timbered stable and barn, a good garden, two orchards with the most important fruits; also a tenant house, with garden and orchard, & c. There is an excellent building and a whetstone quarry on the farm, both of which can be run for a profit, known as Harper's quarry. The farm is well supplied with water from several springs and from Frankford Creek , which forms one of the property lines ... "

The following additional advertisement appeared in various newspapers promoting the Oxford Settlement Plantation, which had served as Rush's country farm and summer residence:

“Philadelphia, March 22, 1786.

On official decree venditioni exponas to me, will be offered for public auction, provided that on SATURDAY the first of next April, at two o'clock in the afternoon, a certain plantation, area or piece of land is located, located and belonging to the settlement of Oxford in Philadelphia County, consisting of 189 acres (5 acres of grassland and 30 woodland) located 6 miles from Philadelphia and the village of Frankfort, on the road leading from Frankfort to Old York Street and surrounded by Dr. Rush, Dr. Redman , Captain Eves, Frankfort Creek, & c. On the plantation mentioned is a large two-storey stone house, with four rooms and per floor, a stone kitchen, a stone milk house, a half-timbered barn, a half-timbered stable and a good whetstone quarry, & c. Executed and sold as the property of Daniel Havartde Travah, by JOSEH COWPERTHWAIT, sheriff "

The proximity of the Rush summer residence may be linked to the studies carried out on the Harrowgate mineral springs, which are half a mile away.

Rush published the first American textbook on chemistry, several volumes on medical student education, and wrote influential patriotic essays. He was active with the Sons of Liberty and was elected to the Provincial Conference to send delegates to the Continental Congress . He consulted Thomas Paine while writing the highly influential pro-independence pamphlet " Common Sense ". He was called to represent Pennsylvania and signed the United States Declaration of Independence .

The five-member committee presented a draft of the US Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress . Painting by John Trumbull which also includes Benjamin Rush.

In 1777 Rush became an operating physician in the Continental Army intermediate division . Conflicts with the Army Medical Service, particularly William Shippen, Jr., resulted in Rush's resignation.

When General George Washington suffered some defeats in the American Revolutionary War , Rush, as part of the Conway Cabal, stood up for his resignation, lost his trust and led to the end of Rush's wartime activities. Rush later regretted his action against Washington. In a letter to John Adams dated 1812, Rush wrote, "He (Washington) was the treasured instrument whose patriotism and name did a great job in establishing the independence of the United States."

In 1783 he was appointed to the staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital , of which he was a member until his death. In 1788 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1791 he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina .

Rush was called to the Pennsylvania Congress, which approved the federal constitution. From 1797 to 1813 he was Treasurer of the US Mint.

James Gillray : The Bloodletting (around 1805)

Rush became professor of medical theory and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania in 1791 . He became a social activist, abolitionist (opponent of slavery) and was the most famous doctor in America at the time of his death. He was also the founder of the private liberal arts college Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania .

In 1809 he was elected a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

In 1812 his cousin William Rush made a sculpture of Benjamin Rush.

Honors

The Rush Glacier on the Antarctic Brabant Island bears his name, as does Rush County in Indiana. In addition, is Rush University in Chicago named after him.

Corps of discovery

In 1803 Thomas Jefferson sent Meriwether Lewis to Philadelphia to prepare the Lewis and Clark Expedition under the supervision of Rush, who briefed Lewis on frontier diseases and how to perform bloodletting . Rush assisted the Corps with a medical package containing:

  • Turkish opium for nervousness
  • an emetic used to induce vomiting
  • medicinal wine
  • fifty dozen of "Dr. Rush's Gall Pills "; Laxatives that contained more than 50% mercury and that the Corps called "thunder clapper". Their meat-rich diet and the lack of clean water during the expedition gave the men a reason to use them frequently. Although its efficiency is questionable, its high mercury content provided an excellent trail that archaeologists could use to trace the actual route of the expedition to the Pacific.

Controversial theories

Rush was a proponent of violent psychotherapy. According to psychiatric historian Thomas Szasz , one of Rush's preferred treatments was to tie a patient to a board and turn it very quickly until all the blood had migrated to the head. He also sent his own son to one of his hospitals for 27 years until he died. He was also a proponent of bloodletting .

Rush believed being black was an inherited disease that he called "negroidism." In a letter to the American Philosophical Society, Rush said that the only evidence of "cure" is when the skin turns white. Rush concluded that

“Whites shouldn't bully blacks, because of their illness they should be given a double dose of humanity. Nevertheless, whites should not marry them, because otherwise the offspring would be infected with the disease ... attempts must be made to cure this disease. "

Contributions to medicine

Benjamin Rush. Painting by Charles Willson Peale , 1783.

In the medical field, Rush was mostly concerned with mental illness . He is seen as the "father of American psychiatry". He published the first textbook on the subject in the United States, "Medical Examinations and Observations on Diseases of the Mind" (1812). Rush was also an advocate of insane asylums, believing that proper treatment could cure mental illness. An institution was even established on the site of his birthplace - see Philadelphia State Hospital . The American Psychiatric Association emblem features his portrait. Benjamin Rush introduced the term addiction .

Until his ministry, chronic drunkenness was viewed as a venial sin that, with good will, can be avoided. Rush said alcoholics are losing control of themselves and identified the properties of alcohol, not the alcoholic's will, as the causative factor. He developed the concept of addiction as a form of disease and ultimately developed the idea that abstinence was the only cure for this addiction.

Rush is sometimes seen as the father of therapeutic horticulture , especially in connection with its institutionalization. In his book, Medical Studies of Mental Illness, published in 1812, Rush wrote:

“It has been noted that male manic in all hospitals, who helped cut branches, light a fire, and plant in a garden, and women engaged in washing, ironing, and cleaning the floor, often recovered, while those whose degree of illness had them freed from these services, spent their lives languishing between the walls of the hospital. "

In addition to his contributions to psychiatry , Benjamin Rush wrote a descriptive account of the yellow fever epidemic that struck Philadelphia in 1793 (while treating up to 120 patients a day). And he wrote a case study of dengue fever in 1789 on a case from 1780 that is believed to be the first of its kind.

Rush lived in the "Age of Heroic Medicine " (1780–1850) and is considered one of its strongest proponents.

During his career he taught over 3,000 medical students, and some of them founded Rush Medical College in Chicago in his honor after his death . One of his last students was Samuel A. Cartwright , later a surgeon in the Confederate States of America , who was tasked with improving sanitary conditions in the camps around Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Port Hudson, Louisiana .

Religious views and visions

Rush is generally considered a Presbyterian and was a founder of the Philadelphia Bible Society. He was a supporter of the Christianization of public life and especially of education. Accordingly, he advocated the Bible as a textbook in public schools.

This means that he had universalistic tendencies, as the following quote about education seems to express:

“Such is my awe of any religion that reveals the attributes of deism , or a future occurrence of reward and punishment, that I would rather see the ideas of Confucius and Mahomed affect our youth than they grow up in a system entirely devoid of religious principles see. But the religion that I want to recommend at this point is that of the New Testament. "

literature

Web links

Commons : Benjamin Rush  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ (EVE, Sarah (1759–1774) from Frankford, Pennsylvania, In Pennsylvania Mag. Hist. Biog. V, 1881, pp. 19–36 and 191–205.) The original manuscript by Sarah Eve is in the department for rare books and manuscripts from Duke University in Georgia. In John Redman's account for the treatment of Sarah Eve, Redman states: “1774 October and November. For my presence with his daughter in the country for several weeks, in consultation with Dr. Rush - £ 90..0..0. ”The bill is in the Pennsylvania State Archives Claims Papers Relating Primarily to Forfeited Estates, 1778–1791. {series # 33.29}
  2. ↑ http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~solly/pages/greenwoodhistory.html ( September 1, 2000 memento on the Internet Archive ) Although the house is on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Buildings and should be protected by law, is threatened with decay due to the negligence of the owners. Rush's summer home is located at 900 Adams Avenue, Philadelphia, Pa. 19124.
  3. ^ [Classified Adv] Source: Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, Date: May 20, 1815; Band: XLIV; Edition: 12013; Page 2]; available at: http://www.godfrey.org/ The advertisement appeared at least thirteen times between May 20, 1815 and June 9, 1815. (Copyright of the digital images by Newsbank and the American Antiquarian Society) The newspaper articles from 1815 could also be available in other locations, such as public libraries, making them public domain. Because of the poor quality of the digitized images from Newsbank, the following excerpt took a lot of work to complete and is an interpretation of words that could be contained in the digital image and therefore cannot be regarded as an exact copy of the original and is therefore not subject to copyright .
  4. ↑ The advertisement appeared at least six times in three separate newspaper editions: "The Freeman's Journal: or, The North-American Intelligencer," March 29, 1786, Volume V, Issue CCLVIII, page 3; The Pennsylvania Mercury and Universal Advertiser, Mar 31, 1786, Issue 85, page 4; "The Independent Gazetteer." April 1, 1786, Volume V, Issue 231, page 1; Available at: http://www.godfrey.org/
  5. ↑ In the past, "Frankford" was also spelled "Frankfort".
  6. ↑ The "road that goes from Frankfort to Old York Street" is either Adamsroad or Fishers Lane. The Adamsroad led to Whitemarsh, while Fishers Lane led to Germantown and was also known as the "Road to Germantown". Many streets, not just Adamsroad and Fishers Lane, were named "Road to Germantown" because they too led to Germantown. Today the streets are called Adams Avenue and E. Fishers Lane. They are still in use today, but are dead ends through the Philadelphia facility.
  7. ↑ "Dr. Redman "is Doctor John Redman, mentor to Dr Benjamin Rush.
  8. ↑ "Captain Eves" was Captain John Eve, brother of Sarah Eve, who was running the Frankford ammunition factory at the time, while his loyalist father, Oswell Eve, was in exile in Nova Scotia and later settled on Cat Island in the Bahamas. (See Database of American Loyalists, A0 13/18 pages (folios) 17, 20–87 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ )
  9. ↑ http://www.americanrevolution.org/deckey.html Explanations on Trumbull's painting.
  10. ^ Member entry by Benjamin Rush at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 23, 2016.
  11. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Benjamin Rush (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on June 23, 2016.
  12. ↑ http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl05t.shtml ( Memento from August 17, 2000 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ^ Bangen, Hans: History of the drug therapy of schizophrenia. Berlin 1992, p. 16 ISBN 3-927408-82-4
  14. ↑ http://www.adherents.com/people/pr/Benjamin_Rush.html
  15. ↑ http://www.benjaminrush.com/
  16. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of November 14, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  17. ↑ http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s30.html
personal data
SURNAME Rush, Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American doctor, writer, teacher, humanist, one of the founding fathers of the United States
DATE OF BIRTH January 4, 1746
PLACE OF BIRTH Byberry Township , Pennsylvania , colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain , now USA
DATE OF DEATH April 19, 1813
Place of death Philadelphia , Pennsylvania , USA