TST O T E 8 
ON THE 
LIFE AND WRITINGS 
OF 
DR. BENJAMIN RUSH. 
By LUNSFORD P. YANDELL, M. D. 
Reprinted from the American Practitioner for July, 1876. 
INDIANAPOLIS: 
JOURNAL COMPANY, PRINTERS. 
I 8 76. NOTES 
ON THE 
LIFE AND WRITINGS 
OF 
DR. BENJAMIN RUSH. 
LUNSFORD P. YANDELL, M. D. 
Reprinted from the American Practitioner for )h£jL..x$ty& 
INDIANAPOLIS: 
JOURNAL COMPANY, PRINTERS 
1876. NOTES ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 
OF 
DR. BENJAMIN RUSH. 
BY 
LUNSFORD P. YANDELL, M. D.* 
Dr. Benjamin Rush, at the close of the last century, was 
not only the most noted medical man in the new world, but 
was absolutely without a rival to dispute his title to supre- 
macy. He was at once the first writer, the first teacher, and 
he foremost practitioner of his time in America. During 
the generation to which he belonged he was more read and 
oftener quoted, not only than any other American physician, 
but than all our other medical authors put together. The 
fame of his writings and teachings, it may be said without 
exaggeration, filled the land, and his name was upon the lips 
of the people as well as of physicians. His name, by com- 
mon consent, has been placed among the worthies of the pro- 
fession, as one which the world will not willingly let die; but 
it may well be asked, who now reads his works? There they 
repose on the shelves of our libraries, gathering cobwebs and 
dust, beside the works of Sydenham and Cullen, hardly more 
*Read before the Louisville Academy of Medicine. 2 
Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
disturbed by readers than the volumes of Boerhaave, Galen, 
or Hippocrates. 
The works of Rush deserve a better fate than this. With 
text-books, mere manuals, systems of.medicine, mutability is 
the law; they are necessarily short-lived. In a science con- 
stantly advancing, like medicine, the system of one age is 
insufficient for the next, and must yield to others embracing 
a fuller history of the subject; but the “Inquiries” of our 
great philosopher abound in original observations, in accounts 
of epidemics witnessed by himself, in suggestive facts, and 
bold, ingenious conjectures, which have a lasting interest. I 
propose to spend an hour, this evening, in a review of some 
of these, in the hope that I may thereby excite in some of 
you a curiosity to know more about the labors of this illus- 
trious physician. 
Dr. Rush was elected Professor of Chemistry in the Penn- 
sylvania College, now University of Pennsylvania, in August, 
1769, when only twenty-three years old, and a little more 
than a year after taking the degree of M. D. at the University 
of Edinburgh. And hardly had he entered upon his duties 
as teacher before he commenced his career as author, for the 
following year he published a number of “Sermons,” as he 
styled them, written for young men on the subject of temper- 
ance and health. But while yet a student he recorded in his 
diary observations on the yellow fever which desolated Phila- 
delphia in 1762, and these memoranda afford almost the only 
notices preserved of that epidemic. He loved to write, and 
urged upon his pupils the great advantage of making notes 
of all they read or saw, repeating to them often the maxim, 
legere sine calamo est somnere. Though engaged nearly nine 
years in the study of his profession, we have his own declara- 
tion that he never wasted a day in idle or frivolous amuse- 
ments. 
In 1774 he began to prepare those papers which gave him 
rank at once among the philosophers of his day, and which 
now are correctly looked upon as the beginning of our medi- 
cal literature. The first was read as an anniversary oration Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
before the American Philosophical Society, of which Jeffer- 
son and Franklin were members. Its subject is the Natural 
History of Medicine among the Indians of North America. 
It is a truly remarkable paper, in which every class of read- 
ers will find matter to interest and instruct. Its style is fresh, 
easy, and singularly pleasing. We meet with opinions in 
which we may not concnr, but the graceful flow of his lan- 
guage must captivate all, as in the following passage: “Some 
of you may remember the time, and our fathers have told 
those of us who do not, when the diseases of Pennsylvania 
were as few and as simple as those of the Indians. The food 
of the inhabitants was then simple; their only drink was 
water; their appetites were restrained by labor; religion ex- 
cluded the influence of sickening passions; private hospitality 
supplied the want of a public hospital; nature was their only 
nurse, temperance their principal physician.” 
In 1780 he wrote an account of a bilious remitting fever as 
it appeared in Philadelphia that year, and which has since 
often been described under the term “dengue or break-bone 
fever.” In some cases it was ushered in with coma; in many 
it was introduced by delirium, and in not a few it was fatal. 
I may mention, as showing how this disease varies in charac- 
ter, at different periods and places, that I saw it in Memphis, 
in the autumn of i860, when out of many thousand persons 
attacked by it, I believe only a single one died. A distin- 
guishing symptom first noticed by Dr. Rush, which I experi- 
enced in my own case and remarked in every instance, was 
extreme dejection of spirits during the convalescing stage. 
A young lady, with great feeling, said to Dr. Rush that she 
thought the complaint “ ought to be called break-heart rather 
than break-bone fever.” By giving a gentle#vomit of tartar 
emetic in the forming stage, he says he frequently produced 
an immediate cure; and in every instance the patient found 
relief from the pains in the head and limbs by emetics and 
gentle purgatives. He continues: “I constantly recom- 
mended to my patients to lie in bed. Persons who struggled 
against the fever by sitting up, or who attempted to shake it 4 
Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
off by labor or exercise, either sunk under it or had a slow 
recovery.” Sometimes dysenteric symptoms accompanied 
the fever, when he used opium with good effect; and this 
leads him to remark that “those physicians enjoy little plea- 
sure in practicing physic who know not how much of the 
pain and anguish of fevers, of a certain kind, may be lessened 
by the judicious use of opium.” 
No remedy is so intimately associated with the name of 
Rush as blood-letting. His use of the lancet brought great 
obloquy upon him in his lifetime, and his devotion to the lan- 
cet, it was charged by some of his contemporaries, amounted 
to insanity. And yet, in the fever under consideration, he 
never resorted to it. ‘‘Out of several hundred patients whom 
I visited,” he remarks, “ I did not meet with a single case in 
which the lancet was indicated by the state of the pulse, 
which was generally full, but never hard;” and he adds that 
he heard of several cases in which bleeding was followed by 
fatal results. 
Scarlatina, of which he gives an account in the same vol- 
ume of his Inquiries, appeared to him quite amenable to 
treatment, ‘‘a vomit of ipecacuanha or tartar emetic, mixed 
with a few grains of calomel, never failing completely to 
check the disorder in its forming stage,” or so far mitigate its 
violence as to dispose it to a favorable issue in a few days. 
And he even held that “when the contagion of this disease 
has been received into the body, a purge has prevented its 
being excited into action, or rendered the disorder mild 
throughout a whole family.” 
His views in regard to cholera infantum were most just. 
He was fully persuaded that summer fruits had no agency 
in developing the complaint. His remedies were, first, an 
emetic, then opiates, the cold bath, and, above all, country 
air. 
Membranous croup, like scarlet fever, he regarded as alto- 
gether under the control of medicines. “The bark,” he de- 
clared, “is scarcely a more certain remedy for intermittents 
than calomel is in this species of cynanche.” Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
Speaking of intermittent fever, he says he had found that 
where bark did not succeed after three or four days’ trial, the 
application of blisters to the wrists often rendered it effectual; 
but that where, from any cause, the disease was protracted 
into the winter months, he generally cured it by one or two 
moderate bleedings. He continues: “I have known several 
instances in which pounds of bark have been taken without 
effect, in which the loss of ten or twelve ounces of blood has 
immediately cured the disorder.” 
On no subject, perhaps, have the therapeutics of Dr. Rush 
been so grossly misapprehended, not to say misrepresented, 
as pulmonary consumption. It has been constantly affirmed 
that he bled his patients in every stage of their disease, shut 
them up in stove-rooms, and gave them mercury to the point 
of causing salivation. But so far is this from the truth that 
he insists, with Sydenham, on horseback exercise as the one 
great remedy in the disease. He bled for intercurrent inflam- 
mations, but says, “If there does exist in nature a remedy 
that will supply the place of exercise, I believe it will be 
found in the class of tonics.” The prime indication is to 
“restore the vigor of the constitution.” All depends, he 
taught, upon the tone of the general system. “ If consump- 
tion be a disease of general debility,” as he held, “it becomes 
us to attempt the cure of it in its first stage; that is, before 
it produce the symptoms of cough, bloody or purulent dis- 
charges from the lungs, and inflammatory or hectic fever.” 
And among his remedies are the cold bath, steel and bark, 
exercise being put before all. 
In dropsy his practice was purely empirical, but, with some 
good remedies, he gives a number of curious cases; as, for 
example, that of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was temporarily 
relieved by fasting; and that of another patient who was 
cured by fear; and he concludes the chapter with the fol- 
lowing words, in which we have an expression of his singu- 
larly hopeful temper: “But let us not despair. It becomes 
a physician to believe that there is no disease necessarily 
incurable; and that there exist in the womb of time certain 6 
Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
remedies for all those disorders which elude the present 
limits of the healing art.” 
He has, in the same volume, an interesting chapter on the 
‘‘influence of the military and political events of the Ameri- 
can revolution upon the human body,” in which, among 
others, he mentions the curious fact, that ‘‘the population of 
the United States was more rapid from births during the war 
than it had ever been in the same number of years since the 
settlement of the country.” This he attributed “chiefly to 
the quantity of money, and to the facility of procuring the 
means of subsistence during the war, which favored marri- 
ages among the laboring part of the people.” Such was the 
cheapness of living that, he says, beggars of every descrip- 
tion disappeared in the year 1776, and were seldom seen till 
near the close of the war. 
Science has been truly said to consist in its facts, and the 
same may be remarked of the value of Dr. Rush’s writings. 
They constitute a repository of trustworthy observations to 
which the reader always turns with instruction. I know not 
where else, in the same compass, so large a number of inter- 
esting facts is to be found recorded. He himself felt that his 
strength was rather in these than in his deductions from 
them; for, in his paper on consumption, he says: “In relat- 
ing the facts that are contained in this essay, I wish I could 
have avoided reasoning upon them; especially as I am con- 
fident of the certainty of the facts, and somewhat doubtful 
of the truth of my reasonings.” In this the modesty of a 
true philosopher appears. 
His “Account of the state of the body and mind in old 
age, with observations on its diseases and their remedies,” 
abounds in personal observations, in incidents in biography 
and history, and in medical facts, and is one of the most 
charming essays to be found in any literature. Among other 
means for securing a green old age, he mentions “young 
company,” which, he contends, should be preferred by old 
people to the company of persons of their own age. And 
he goes on to say: “I think I have observed old people to Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
7 
enjoy better health and spirits when they have passed the 
evening of their lives in the families of their children, than 
when they lived by themselves. Even the solicitude they 
feel for the welfare of their descendants contributes to invigo- 
rate the circulation of the blood, and thereby to add fuel to 
the lamp of life.” 
Philadelphia was visited in 1773 by an epidemic of yel- 
low fever more fatal than any that had preceded it, and the 
year following he published an account of the disease, which 
forms the third volume of his “Inquiries.” He believed, at 
one time, that the fever was contagious, but had the candor 
to acknowledge that he was led by the arguments of Web- 
ster and of his pupil, Dr. Charles Caldwell, to change his 
opinion. He thought, for a time, that he was the first to 
ascribe the pestilence to a domestic origin, but when he 
learned that Dr. Bond had maintained the doctrine before 
him he candidly published the fact to the world. No more 
graphic history of an epidemic is to be found in our language 
than is here given of yellow fever. He describes with great 
force the distress of mind with which he saw the scourge 
advance and his patients sink under it, regardless of his 
remedies. “ Baffled in every attempt to stop the ravages of 
this fever,” he says, “I anticipated all the numerous and 
complicated distresses in our city which pestilential diseases 
have so often produced in other countries. The fever had a 
malignity and an obstinacy which I had never before ob- 
served in any disease, and it spread with a rapidity and 
mortality far beyond what it did in the year 1762. Heaven 
alone bore witness to the anguish of my soul in this awful 
situation. But I did not abandon a hope that the disease 
might yet be cured. I had long believed that good was com- 
mensurate with evil, and that there does not exist a disease 
for which the goodness of Providence has not provided a 
remedy. Under the impression of this belief, I applied my- 
self with fresh ardor to the investigation of the disease before 
me. I ransacked my library, and pored over every book that 
treated of the yellow fever. The result of my researches for 8 
Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
a while was fruitless. The account of the symptoms and 
cure of the disease by the authors I consulted were contra- 
dictory, and none of them appeared altogether applicable to 
the prevailing epidemic. Before I desisted from the inquiry 
to which I had devoted myself, I recollected that I had 
among some old papers a manuscript account of the yellow 
fever as it prevailed in Virginia in the year 1741, which had 
been put into my hands by Dr. Franklin, a short time before 
his death. I had read it formerly, and made extracts from it 
into my lectures upon that disorder. I now read it a second 
time. I paused upon every sentence; even words in some 
places arrested my attention. In reading the history of the 
method of cure, I was struck with the following passages: 
‘Evacuation by purges is more necessary in this than most 
other fevers. I have given a purge when the pulse has been 
so low that it could hardly be felt, and the debility extreme, 
and yet both one and the other have been restored by it.’ 
Here I paused. A new train of ideas suddenly broke in 
upon my mind.” He at once tried the practice, giving, at 
first, calomel and jalap in doses of ten grains each, but as 
this proved to be too slow finally increasing the jalap to fif- 
teen grains; and the effect, he said, far exceeded his expecta- 
tions. It perfectly cured four out of five of the first patients 
to whom he gave the purgatives, notwithstanding some of 
them were advanced several days in the disorder. He im- 
parted the prescription to the College of Physicians, and 
endeavored to remove the fears of his fellow-citizens by 
assuring them that the disease was no longer incurable. “I 
can never forget the transport with which Dr. Pennington 
ran across the street to inform me, a few days after he began 
to give strong purges, that the disease yielded to them in 
every case.” 
But we must not infer from this strong testimony to the 
value of purgatives, that he employed no other remedies. 
With their use he conjoined cool air, cold drinks, cold water 
bathing, and above all blood-letting. The success of his prac- 
tice, as has been said; surpassed his fondest hopes, and he Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
9 
exclaims, “Never before did I experience such sublime joy 
as I now felt in contemplating the success of my new reme- 
dies. It repaid me for all the toils and studies of my life. 
The conquest of this formidable disease was not the effect of 
accident, nor of the application of a single remedy, but it 
was the triumph of a principle in medicine.” On the ioth of 
September he wrote in his diary: “Thank God! Out of one 
hundred patients whom I have visited or prescribed for this 
day, I have lost none.” 
The practice, however, was not universally accepted by his 
brother practitioners; on the contrary, it encountered a storm 
of opposition. Kuhn, one of his colleagues, as well as Wis- 
tar, denounced it as most dangerous; and Currie, a physician 
and writer of note, went so far as to declare that it “could 
not fail of being certain death.” By many of his brethren he 
was represented as insane, and some of his fellow-citizens 
eve’n proposed to “drum him out of the city.” “One of my 
patients,” he says, “who had believed it (his insanity) express- 
ed her surprise at perceiving no deviation from my ordinary 
manner in a sick room.” His own health gave way at last 
under the severe pressure to which it was subjected, and his 
friends urged him to retire to the country; but to a corres- 
pondent he wrote that he “ had resolved to stick to his prin- 
ciples, his practice, and his patients, to the last extremity.” 
And he refers to the slanders propagated against him “only 
for the sake of declaring, in this public manner, that I most 
heartily forgive them; and that if I discovered at any time 
an undue sense of the unkindness and cruelty of those slan- 
ders, it was not because I felt myself injured by them, but 
because I was sure they would irreparably injure my fellow- 
citizens, by lessening their confidence in the only remedies 
that I believed to be effectual in the reigning epidemic.” He 
adds magnanimously, “I commit them to the dust.” 
His history of yellow fever is a truly great work. His 
account is minute, spirited, graphic, and possesses all the 
interest of a personal narrative. I am sure that no one who 
begins to read it will be disposed to lay it down without con- Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
eluding it; and no one can follow the author through his 
faithful story without a conviction that he was at once a 
philosopher and a man of true nobleness of soul. 
Theory, a hundred years ago, was a leading feature in the 
teachings of every medical man who claimed to be an in- 
structor. When a student with Dr. Redman, Rush adopted 
that of Boerhaave respecting fever, that the proximate cause 
is “a lentor of the blood,” together with morbific matters in 
the vital fluid; but on going to Edinburgh he relinquished 
this theory and embraced that of Hoffman, which Cullen had 
accepted and improved, to-wit, that the cause is a spasm of 
the capillaries of the surface of the body. This he found un- 
satisfactory when he became a teacher, and so he framed one 
of his own, according to which fevers of all kinds are preceded 
by general debility, which gives place, sooner or later, to 
increased excitability. There is but one cause of feyer, and 
that is a stimulus, which gives rise to irregular or convulsive 
action in the arteries. And as there is but one cause of 
fever, so fever itself is a unit, as fire is one and the same 
whether created by friction, fermentation, electricity, or com- 
bustion-; pleurisy, dropsy, angina, phthisis, and the rest, being 
but symptoms of the primary disease in the sanguiferous sys- 
tem. Apoplexy is but an apoplectic form of fever, and so of 
rheumatism, mania, nephritis, etc. The eruptive state of fever 
is shown in small pox, measles, and the other exanthemata. 
Dr. Rush submitted this theory to his pupils, as a substi- 
tute for that of his great master, Cullen, with the lines: 
“ We think our fathers fools so wise we grow, 
Our wiser sons, I hope, will think us so.” 
No professional son of Dr. Rush will ever account him a fool. 
At the same time it must be admitted that anything more 
baseless than his theory it would be difficult to find in all the 
dreams of philosophers. But we are to remember that it was 
of such stuff that medical speculation had been composed for 
ages and still consisted in his day, and his hypotheses are as 
substantial as those that had preceded them. Happily, a Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
11 
change has come over the spirit of medicine, and medical 
teachers no longer waste much time framing theories of fever. 
He had remarked, in the treatment of fever, that convales- 
cence was a pretty sure attendant upon salivation, and natu- 
rally but falsely inferred that the specific effect of mercury 
was curative in such cases; and hence it became a practice 
with him, which unfortunately obtained long and extensively 
after his time, to induce ptyalism in acute diseases. I have 
a most vivid recollection of the appearance of patients in the 
infirmary at Baltimore, in connection with the University, 
under the care of his pupil, Dr. Potter, with bowls at their 
cheeks to catch the saliva as it flowed day after day from 
their mouths. Long since the barbarous practice has been 
relinquished, the profession having come to understand that 
salivation follows convalescence, and is in no sense or degree 
the cause of it. 
The “Inquiries” close with “a defense of blood-letting as 
a remedy for certain diseases,” in which are displayed the 
boldness, the independence of thought, the earnestness, and 
the enthusiasm, by which Dr. Rush was distinguished above 
all his contemporaries. Blood-letting, he taught, was indi- 
cated in the inflammatory state of fever ; by sudden suppres- 
sion of natural discharges inducing plethora; by the proxi- 
mate cause of fever; by the symptoms of its first state; by 
the rupture of blood vessels; by the relief obtained in fe- 
vers; by the immense advantages attending it in inflamma- 
tory fevers. Some of these advantages he recites. Thus he 
says: It frequently strangles a fever; it imparts strength 
by removing indirect debility; it reduces frequency of pulse 
when excessive, and increases it when preternaturally slow; it 
relieves nausea and vomiting; it renders the bowels more 
soluble by purging physic; it renders the system easier of 
salivation; it removes or lessens pain in every part of the 
body, relieves burning heat of the skin, checks sweats, some- 
times checks a diarrhoea and tenesmus, after astringents have 
failed; it removes coma, induces sleep, prevents effusions of 
serum and blood, and the chronic diseases of cough, con- 12 
Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
sumption, jaundice, abscess in the liver, and all the different 
states of dropsy, which so often follow autumnal fevers. 
The following case affords at once an example of his 
heroic practice, and some insight into his character as a 
man. He says: 
“My friend, Mrs. Lennox, after having been cured of the 
yellow fever by seven bleedings, was affected, in consequence 
of taking a ride, with a slight return of fever, accompanied by 
an acute pain in the head, which I was afraid would end in a 
dropsy of the brain. As her pulse was tense and quick, I 
advised repeated bleedings to remove it. This was not fol- 
lowed. The pain in the meantime became more alarming. 
In this situation, two physicians were proposed by her friends 
to consult with me. I objected to them both because I knew 
their principles and modes of practice to be contrary to mine, 
and that they were proposed only with a view of wresting 
the lancet from my hand. From this desire of avoiding a 
controversy with my brethren, where conviction was impos- 
sible on either side, as well as to obviate all cause of com- 
plaint by my patient’s friends, I offered to take my leave of 
her, and to resign her wholly to the care of the two gentle- 
men who were proposed to attend her with me. To this she 
objected in a decided manner. But that I might not be sus- 
pected of an undue reliance upon my own judgment, I pro- 
posed to call upon Dr. Griffiths or Dr. Physiek to assist me 
in my attendance upon her. Both these physicians had re- 
nounced the prejudices of the schools in which they had 
been educated, and had conformed their principles and prac- 
tice to the present improving state of medical science. My 
patient preferred Dr. Griffiths, who in his first visit to her, as 
soon as he felt her pulse, proposed more bleeding. The 
operation was performed by the doctor himself, and repeated 
daily for five days afterwards. From an apprehension that 
the disorder was so fixed as to require some aid to blood- 
letting, we gave her calomel in such doses as to excite a sali- 
vation. By the use of these remedies she recovered slowly, 
but so perfectly as to enjoy her usual health.” Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
13 
Yet, after all, Dr. Rush was not an indiscriminate bleeder, 
but points out clearly the state of the pulse and the circum- 
stances in which bleeding is proper or inadmissible; and he 
alludes to numerous cases in which the lancet, unwisely em- 
ployed, had seemed to him to have been the cause of death. 
An anecdote is related of him, bearing upon his extrava- 
gant use of the lancet and calomel, which shows that the idea 
of insanity which prevailed in relation to him was not alto- 
gether unnatural. When the epidemic of 1793 was at its 
height, he had gone one day over to Kensington, one of the 
suburbs of Philadelphia, to visit a friend ill with the fever. 
The fact that he was in the neighborhood soon became gen- 
erally known, and the friends and relations of the sick col- 
lected, according to the story, not by dozens but by fifties 
and hundreds, near a bridge which it was known he must 
cross in returning, to consult him. Finding his way blocked 
up by the great assemblage, and unable to visit all who sought 
his aid, he directed his carriage to be stopped and requested 
the multitude to approach him as closely as they could, when 
he said to them: “I treat my patients successfully by blood- 
letting, and copious purging with calomel and jalap, ten grains 
of each for adults, and six for children; and I advise you, my 
good friends, to use the same remedies.” “What!” cried a 
voice from the crowd, “bleed and purge every one?” “Yes,” 
replied the doctor, “bleed and purge all Kensington;” and 
then drove on.* 
His opposition to nosology is as well known as anything 
relating to his medical opinions. Rising from his chair as he 
lectured, it is related by his old pupils, he would exclaim with 
intense earnestness, in imitation of Cato, “ Delenda, delenda, 
delenda est nosologiaThis hostility resulted partly from his 
peculiar notions about the unity of disease, but was cfiiefly 
excited by the routine practice which he saw physicians con- 
tinually pursuing. Disease he held, and held wisely, is to be 
treated, not for the name but according to the morbid condi- 
tions in each case. 
* Caldwell’s Autobiography. 14 
Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
An erroneous impression has prevailed that he disregarded 
the voice of nature in disease, and would “turn the vis medi- 
catrix natures out of a sick room as he would a noisy cat;” 
and the idea derives color from his use of the expression 
quoted. But under what circumstances does he advise such 
a course? When, in violent diseases or those of feeble reac- 
tion, nature is doing nothing but mischief. For example, 
where there is a burning fever, he would reduce it by cold 
water; where there are wasting watery discharges, as in chol- 
era, he would check them; where the patient is cold, he 
would warm him; where he has no appetite, still he would 
feed him until appetite returns. He would reduce reaction 
to the level of nature’s salutary efforts. Follow nature, he 
inculcated in his writings and his lectures, but not implicitly 
or blindly. In many cases there is no guide so trustworthy, 
but the physician must determine when and how far to follow 
her. “ One of the greatest attainments and frequently the 
last in the practice of medicine,” he said, “is to know when 
to do nothing.” “No medicine,” he adds, quoting Hippo- 
crates, “is often the best medicine.” 
Besides his four volumes of Inquiries, Dr. Rush published 
a volume of essays, literary, moral and philosophical, the ser- 
mons to young men already mentioned, a volume of intro- 
ductory lectures, and a treatise on diseases of the mind, 
which appeared only a short time before he died, and may, 
perhaps, be accounted the ablest of his works. Of all the 
books pertaining to medicine written in our country, it is the 
one oftenest quoted by our brethren abroad. In it the author 
shows that he was abreast with the most enlightened writers 
of his day on mental diseases. He had caught the spirit of 
the great Pinel, and recognized the nature of insanity and the 
true principle in its treatment. To him the new world is 
indebted for the application of the law of kindness in the 
management of lunatics, and their condition has been one of 
steady improvement from his time to the present day. It is 
a eulogy justly due him that “he opened the prison doors of Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
15 
the maniac, unbarred his noisome dungeon, and knocked the 
shackles from his limbs, substituting moral treatment for 
brute force, and love for fear.” 
Of a most sanguine temperament, he had the utmost faith 
in the capabilities of medicine, and was persuaded that a 
beneficent Creator had provided a remedy for every physical 
as well as every moral evil incident to our present state. 
One of these he predicted, and in the true spirit of the Ba- 
conian philosophy. In the following passage the discovery 
of anaesthetics in childbirth is clearly foretold: “I have ex- 
pressed a hope in another place (Med. Repos., Vol. VI.) that 
a medicine would be discovered that should suspend sensibil- 
ity altogether, and leave irritability, or the powers of motion, 
unimpaired, and thereby destroy labor pains altogether. I 
was encouraged to cherish this hope by having known a 
delivery to take place, in one instance, during a paroxysm of 
epilepsy, and having heard of another, during a fit of drunk- 
enness, in a woman attended by Dr. Church, in both of which 
there was neither consciousness nor recollection of pain.” 
Not many medical writers have ventured to introduce 
themselves so often and unreservedly to their readers as Dr. 
Rush. The act is always one of delicacy and some danger, 
and if not performed gracefully and with dignity is sure to 
offend. Dr. Rush is never more interesting than when speak- 
ing of himself. Among the many charming features that 
belong to his writings none are more pleasing than his per- 
sonal allusions, always unaffected, perfectly devoid of vanity, 
and in good taste. Nothing that I have read exceeds in 
beauty or pathos the following passage, for example, in which 
he refers to himself in connection with his forefathers. He 
is standing in the cemetery where they sleep. “While con- 
sidering this repository of the dead,” he says, “then holding 
my kindred dust, my thoughts ran wild, and my ancestors 
seemed to stand before me in their homespun dresses, and to 
say, ‘What means this gentleman by thus intruding upon our 
repose?’ and I seemed to say, ‘Dear and venerable friends, 16 
Life and Writings of Dr. Benjamin Rush. 
be not disturbed. I am one who inherits your blood and 
name, and have come here to do homage to your Christian 
and moral virtues; and truly I have acquired nothing from 
the world, though raised in fame, which I so highly prize as 
the religious principles I inherited from you; and I possess 
nothing that I value so much as the innocence and purity of 
your character.’ ” 
It is known to you all that Rush was something more than 
a great medical writer and teacher and philosopher. The 
storm of revolution, which fora time closed his lecture-room, 
drove him into politics, and his name appears among those 
of the great statesmen of his period. A hundred years ago 
he was subscribing it to our Declaration of Independence, 
where it will be read by the latest generations of men. Five 
members of Congress from Pennsylvania had refused to sign 
the declaration, deeming it premature, and so refusing had 
retired from the house. Rush was one of those who were 
elected to fill the vacancies thus created; and so, as has been 
said, “ did not sign the tremendous parchment because he 
was a member, but became a member that he might sign it.” 
In the century that has elapsed since that momentous 
event American medical literature has made very great 
progress. Many able works have been given to the world 
by our physicians—works of great research, of true erudi- 
tion, of immense practical value to the profession—works of 
which our country is justly proud; but if I were called upon 
to declare which among them all I would prefer to have writ- 
ten, I should unhesitatingly name the writings of Benjamin 
Rush. 
Louisville, Ky