Alone among those who signed the Declaration of Independence,
Benjamin Rush heard the cries of those other, deprived Americans and stepped forth as the nation's first great humanitarian and social reformer.
Benjamin Rush. Each chapter focuses on the health and illness of a couple or an individual, with Jefferson getting two chapters.
Springing across chapters on how
Benjamin Rush (signatory to the Declaration of Independence), intersected with and adjusted in relation to his varied medical contexts, or on how Robert Burns's melancholia met the philosophical and medical terms of the time, we gain a rich appreciation for the intensities, alignments and disjunctions of a complex cultural discourse.
During the 1780s and 1790s, Philadelphia physician, public intellectual, and college founder
Benjamin Rush wrote a series of essays on the subject of education for republics; for the State of Pennsylvania generally, for the city of Philadelphia specifically, and young ladies particularly that contradicted Jefferson's and Madison's separationist case.
1) in 1812 when, at the insistence of his friend
Benjamin Rush, who wanted the two great Americans to resolve their differences and resume their friendship, Adams wrote a short letter to Jefferson, prompting Jefferson to respond, which eventually resulted in 158 letters between them over the next 14 years.
Other stops on the Philly Ghost Tour include Old City Hall, Washington Square (home of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier), the
Benjamin Rush House, City Tavern, and Christ Church Burial Ground, a colonial-age cemetery where Benjamin Franklin was laid to rest.
Benjamin Rush, founder of Pennsylvania Hospital, also founded one of the first prison reformation societies.
Prominent Philadelphian
Benjamin Rush was the first American physician to write about psychiatric care in his 1812 book, Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind.
(That is why the Jeffersonians strove so mightily against the Federalists.) John Adams, for example, believed that limited monarchy is a thing found in nature, and wrote that Americans were suited only to "Aristo-Democratical Monarchy";
Benjamin Rush predicted that the American people would become so corrupt within a century that absolute monarchy would be required to govern them.
* Contrary to what Barton says, Jefferson described his religious faith in 1803 to a friend and fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence,
Benjamin Rush, "I am a Christian, in the only sense in which [Jesus] wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other."
Adams wrote sarcastically to
Benjamin Rush that if things got any worse, his pastor might begin public worship with, "Let us sing to the praise and glory of G.
So who was
Benjamin Rush? How did he commit treason against the British Crown by signing one document, and then try to betray George Washington with one he wouldn't sign?
Only a year after Paine published his pamphlet, the friend who had suggested the title Common Sense, the physician and revolutionary leader
Benjamin Rush, decided that it was a mistake to conflate common sense with equality.
