RUSH, Benjamin, a celebrated American physician, born on the 5th of January 1745, near Bristol, in Pennsylvania, was descended from a family who were originally Quakers, and who had accompanied Penn, in 1683, to his infant colony.

He lost his father at an early age, and having been first placed by his mother at a school kept by the Rev. S. Finley, he proceeded to finish his classical education at the college of Princeton, and there took a degree of bachelor of arts before he was sixteen. He then determined to make the profession of physic the pursuit of his life, and went to study it, first under the care of Dr Redman of Philadelphia, and then at Edinburgh, where he was created a doctor of physic in 1768. At the time of his return from Europe, a new school of medicine was about to be founded in Philadelphia, and he became professor of chemistry immediately upon his arrival. In 1776, he began to take an active part, with the rest of his countrymen, in the political struggle of the day, and he was chosen a member of congress for the state of Pennsylvania; in 1777 he was appointed surgeon-general to the army, and not long afterwards became physician-general. He also contributed his best efforts to the improvement of the internal government of the state which he represented. But he soon withdrew his attention from political affairs, in order to devote it exclusively to medical and literary subjects; and he continued to be actively engaged in the practice of physic for the remainder of his life.

In 1776 he married Miss Julia Stockton of New Jersey. He had by her thirteen children, nine of whom survived him in respectability and prosperity. In 1791, when the two medical colleges of Philadelphia were incorporated into a single university, he was appointed professor of the institutes of medicine, and of clinical practice. In 1793, he greatly distinguished himself by the new and apparently successful modes of practice that he introduced in the epidemic yellow fever, which was then causing great mortality throughout the United States; and which, shortly before his death, he was induced to believe not contagious, but derived from some general causes independently of the previous existence of the disease. He died on the 13th of April 1813, after an illness of five days, of a typhus fever, with some pulmonary symptoms. He had for a considerable part of his life been threatened with consumption, but had combated its attacks with unusual success. The number of his writings is considerable in proportion to their bulk; the times and the state of society in which he lived being such as to produce rather hasty and spirited than highly finished compositions.

1. His inaugural dissertation was entitled De concoctione ciborum in ventricule, and contained an explanation of the opinions relating to digestion, which he had learned from Dr Cullen. Edinburgh, 1768.

2. Account of the Effects of the Stramonium. American Phil. Trans. i. 1770.

3. On the utility of Wort in ill-conditioned. Ulcers. Med. Obs. Inq. iv. 1770; addressed to Dr Huck.

4. Inquiry into the Natural History of Medicine amongst the Indians of North America; an anniversary oration delivered in 1774.

5. Remarks on Bilious Fevers, addressed to Dr Huck. Med. Obs. Inq. v.

6. Account of the Influence of the Revolution on the Human Body; with Observations on the Diseases of Military Hospitals.

7. Inquiry into the Cause of the Increase of Bilious and Intermitting Fevers in Pennsylvania. American Trans, ii.

8. Observations on Tetanus.

9. Inquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes upon the Moral Faculty.

10. Remarks on the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Body and Mind.

11. Inquiry into the Causes and Cure of Pulmonary Consumption, in his Medical Inquiries and Observations, i. Phil. 1788. His grand object, in the cure of consumption, is to recommend exercise, and every thing which will enable the patient to take exercise; anticipating a practice which has become somewhat fashionable in England of late years, from its frequent success as a temporary palliative. The subject is continued in the second volume of the Inquiries, published in 1793; and bleeding is very strongly recommended in the earlier and only curable stages. Consumption, he observes, is common in America, though scrofula scarcely ever occurs; and it has sometimes been known to be clearly communicated by infection to the negroes belonging to a family, who had, of course, no consanguinity that could account for a similarity of constitution. Five volumes, in the whole, of this collection, appeared from 1788 to 1798; a second edition was published in 1804, in four volumes 8vo; a third in 1805, revised and enlarged, with a continuation of the Histories of the Yellow Fever from 1793 to 1809; a Defence of Bloodletting as a Remedy for Certain Diseases; A View of the State of Medicine in Philadelphia; An Inquiry into the Sources of the Usual Forms of Summer and Autumnal Diseases in the United States; and the recantation of his opinion of the contagious nature of the yellow fever, already mentioned.

12. Information to Europeans disposed to Emigrate to the United States, in a Letter to a Friend.

13. Observations on the Population of Pennsylvania.

14. Observations on Tobacco.

15. A New Mode of Inoculating Small-Pox, a Lecture. Reprinted, Phil. 1792, 8vo.

16. Essay on the Study of the Latin and Greek Languages, American Museum; condemning it as a waste of time, oppressive to the poor dunces who are tortured into their parts of speech, to the great scandal of a humane and republican country, and subversive of a proper respect for the rights of boys, and, consequently, for the rights of man.

17. Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798, 8vo, containing a republication of the last article, together with the author’s Eulogiums on Dr Cullen and on Professor Rit-tenhouse, delivered in 1790 and 1796, and with some other miscellaneous papers of less moment. 1806.

18. Lectures on the Cause of Animal Life, 1791.

19. Account of the Sugar Maple Tree. American Trans. iii. 1791.

20. Observations on the Black Colour of the Negro, American Trans. iv. 1792; attributing the blackness to leprosy.

21. History of the Yellow Fever, 1794. This celebrated work has been translated into French and Spanish. At the time of its publication, an almost superstitious dread was entertained by medical men of the use of the lancet in idiopathic fever; and few books have ever had so powerful and extensive an effect in altering the general treatment of a disease as this history had produced in every part of the world. Probably, indeed, it may have carried a number of the younger and bolder practitioners into an opposite extreme; but, with respect to the author’s claims [7:19:524]to merit on the occasion, it must be allowed that the innovation showed an uncommon combination of courage with talent and good sense; and the accurate description of the disease that he has given us fully establishes his claim to the character of an accurate nosologist.

22. On the Symptoms and Cure of Dropsy, and especially of Water in the Head. 1793.

23. An Account of the Influenza of Philadelphia in 1789, 1790, 1791.

24. Observations on the State of the Body and Mind in Old Age. 1794.

25. Observations on the Nature and Cure of Gout and Hydrophobia. 1797.

26. Inquiry into the Cause and Cure of the Cholera Infantum. 1797.

27. Observations on Cynanche Trachealis. 1797.

28. Introductory Lectures. 1801. Ed. 2, 1811; with ten new introductory lectures, and two lectures on the Pleasures of the Senses and of the Mind.

29. In 1809 he published the works of Sydenham and of Cleghorn, with Notes, and in 1810 those of Pringle and Hilary.

30. On Diseases of the Mind, 8vo, 1812; an elaborate work, which had long been impatiently expected.

31. A letter on Hydrophobia, 1813; addressed to Dr Hosack, and containing additional reasons for believing the seat of the disease to be chiefly in the blood-vessels; an opinion which, in all probability, has at least tended to shorten the sufferings of several individuals on whom the experiment of profuse depletion has been tried.

Dr Rush’s numerous publications obtained him many marks of respect from his contemporaries, and procured him admission, as an honorary member, into the most distinguished literary and philosophical societies of Europe. His name was familiar to the medical world as the Sydenham of America. His accurate observations and correct discrimination of epidemic diseases well entitled him to this distinction; while, in the original energy of his reasoning, he far excelled his prototype. His literary and professional character, indeed, appears to have been greatly influenced by the moral and political sentiments which were prevalent in his day. A love of innovation led him to that proud defiance of established authority which is just as likely to be pernicious as to be salutary.· The study of the learned languages he depreciated, in one of his early essays, as unfit for a republican education; and this was the first step to the true Jacobin doctrine, that it was unrepublican and aristocratical to have received any education whatever. In physic, his rejection of the prejudices of antiquity was somewhat more consistent with moderation, and the reform that he attempted was occasionally more successful than his literary speculations; nor can it be denied that there are a multitude of original suggestions in his works, which may very probably be found capable of affording valuable hints to the lovers of medical experiments.

Hosack and Francis in the American Med. Philos. Register; Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary, xxv. London, 1816, 8vo. (l. l.)