#benjamin rush

[theballadofquincy]

okay of course the hot founding father made the fucking chair of horrors

[julesncfl]

ok Carlisle stuff

molly pitcher!! in the oldest graveyard in the city

various historical signs all around the city. it’s really cool to see how many they have 🥹

more signs 😳😳 so cool

BENJAMIN RUSH 🥹🥹✌️✌️ I couldn’t get a good picture but this is the statue in the carlisle dickinson campus

[pythiaswine]

the craziest part of some of the shit Adams wrote about Hamilton is that it was written years after his death. like get a grip, we know you hated Hamilton, but the man was semi-recently killed. 1805 and 1806 are two of the most damning letters where he's shit-talking and calling Hamilton a bastard brat, a Scottish creole, insolent coxcomb, a creature in delirium of ambition, etc etc.

[feis-historical-days]

Today is the 280th anniversary of Benjamin Rush’s birthday

For all dates, I will use N.S. (New Style) unless otherwise specified. This refers to the shift from the Julian to Gregorian calendars. England was one of the later countries to do so, with its shift happening in 1752, which affects the birthdays of many people.

January 4, 1746 (December 24, 1745, O.S.)

Leader of the American Enlightenment and Revolution

Father of American Psychiatry

Benjamin Rush was born on January 4, 1746 in Byberry, Pennsylvania. Early on in the revolution, he became involved in the Sons of Liberty and is accredited with suggesting the title “Common Sense” to Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, originally called “Plain Truth”. He served as a Pennsylvania delegate to the Second Continental Congress, signing the Declaration of Independence, as well as a delegate to the Pennsylvania Convention, pushing for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

Rush was not only a political leader but a physician, graduating from the College of New Jersey in 1760 and earning his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh in 1768. In 1769, as a professor in the College of Philadelphia, he taught over 3000 students and published the first American textbook on chemistry entitled Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on Chemistry.

Starting in 1776, he served as a Surgeon General for the Middle Department of the Continental Army, publishing Directions for Preserving the Health of Soldiers in 1777, but resigned in 1778 due to disagreements with George Washington and William Shippen Jr. (a cousin of Peggy Shippen and former teacher of Rush) over the poor condition of military hospitals. Rush would write a letter criticizing Washington, which he later regrets.

Rush was heavily involved in the Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793, not only medically but politically. He theorized that all diseases were ultimately one, treatable with bloodletting and purging; he called for “heroic” or extreme measures during the epidemic, which eventually led to more harm than benefit for the patients. As a Democratic-Republican supporter of Thomas Jefferson, Rush’s beliefs were attacked by Federalist Alexander Hamilton, and politics grew so entangled with healthcare that bloodletting and purging became known as the “Republican way”. Furthermore, Rush called upon miasma theory to explain the roots of the epidemic, while Hamilton believed the fever was caused by French immigrants (many of which tended to be Anti-Federalists), which necessitated a shutdown of the docks.

Shortly before his death, Rush published Medical Inquiries and Observations upon Diseases of the Mind, the first American textbook in the field, earning him the title of the “Father of American Psychiatry”. He believed mental illnesses stemmed from physical causes, such as the swelling of blood vessels in the brain, rather than possession by demons and suggested bloodletting, purging, hot and cold baths, mercury, and tranquilizer chairs as remedies. During his time running the mental ward at the Pennsylvania Hospital, he advocated for patients to be ‘treated as humans’ and that caretakers take them on walks and regularly converse with them to bring them closer to sanity.

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/benjamin-rush

References

https://www.americanrevolution.org/benjamin-rush-biography/

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/topics/diseases-of-mind/bio-benjamin-rush.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Rush

[sherlockedin1776]

Doing some research on Benji for my thesis and he apparently got into this beef with a Dr. Cullen, first name unknown, and I’m just giggling so much.

Like yeah Benji go argue the pros of bloodletting to the vegetarian vampire

[chaotic-history]

Rip Benjamin Rush, you would've loved 2024 Tumblr discourse

[deadpresidents]

When did Adams and Jefferson last see each other in person?

I don't think they saw each other in person again after 1801 -- following Jefferson's election as President but before his inauguration because Adams left town before Jefferson was sworn in. Their friendship started to fall apart when Washington was President and really started to fray during the 1796 election, when Adams defeated Jefferson, which meant Jefferson ended up as Vice President under Adams because the system for electing the President and Vice President was ridiculous prior to the enactment of the 12th Amendment. The 1800 election was even nastier than 1796, and Adams retired to Massachusetts without sticking around for Jefferson's inauguration and they completely fell out of contact for over a decade.

Fellow Founding Father Benjamin Rush tried to get Adams and Jefferson to reconcile once Jefferson left office in 1809, but was unsuccessful until one of Jefferson's neighbors told him that he had visited Adams and Adams had said, "I always loved Jefferson and still love him," which led Jefferson to let Rush know that any beef that he had towards Adams was definitely squashed and that he'd respond if Adams wrote to him. Adams sent Jefferson a letter on January 1, 1812, Jefferson responded on January 21, and they restarted their remarkable correspondence and kept writing each other until they both died on the very same day, July 4, 1826, which also happened to be the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence, which will always be one of the craziest coincidences in the history of human existence.

[johnadamsbignaturals]

benjamin rush was such a fucking g. like, he was anti-slavery, rejected the idea that non-white races were biologically inferior, gave lewis and clark opium for anxiety, AND he killed george washington???? king shit.