On this episode of Our American Stories, Dr. Benjamin Rush is America’s Forgotten Founding Father; perhaps because many historians don’t know what to do about his outspoken faith. Rush was the one who encouraged Thomas Paine to write “Common Sense,” which fueled the American Revolution. Here's Harlow Giles Unger presenting a book talk at the Library of Congress on the man. Unger is a New York Times bestselling author of twenty-eight books including Dr. Benjamin Rush: The Founding Father Who Healed a Wounded Nation.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories and up next well,
one of our favorite regular subjects American history. Doctor Benjamin
Rush is America's forgotten founding father. His signature on the
Declaration of Independence comes immediately before that other famous Benjamin,
and that of course would be Benjamin Franklin. The fruits
(00:31):
of Rush's underlying faith is the story though, that we're
about to hear from a prolific founding Father's biographer, Harlow
Giles Hunger. Harlowe is a New York Times bestselling author
of twenty eight books, including Doctor Benjamin Rush, The Founding
Father Will Healed a Wounded Nation. He is also a
former Distinguished Visiting Fellow in American History at George Washington's
(00:54):
Mount Vernon. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Doctor Benjamin Rush was one of the most important of
our founding fathers in many ways the most important. George
Washington was unquestionably the father of our political and military structure,
and Alexander Hamilton fathered our economic structure. But it was
doctor Benjamin Rush who fathered our social structure. He was
(01:21):
the only doctor with a medical school degree who signed
the Declaration of Independence, and with his signature, he began
a lifelong struggle for abolition of slavery, for women's rights,
for a ban on child labor. He fought for establishment
of universal, free public education. He was first to advocate
(01:45):
temperate use of alcohol and opposed tobacco use.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
He demanded that other.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Doctors treat the poor as well as the rich African
Americans as well as whites. Doctors wouldn't treat African Americans.
Then he founded two great schools of higher education in Pennsylvania,
Dickinson University in Carlisle and Franklin College now known as
Franklin and Marshall College. And he saved his alma Mada,
(02:14):
Princeton College from oblivion after British.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Troops burned it down.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Just after the young doctor rush One appointment to Philadelphia
Hospital as it was called, then he discovered a basement
filled with starving human beings chained to walls, lying in
their own filths, moaning, groaning, some with infected sores. Rush
stormed into the hospital doctor's office and demanded their release
(02:43):
and transfer into clean hospital rooms. He agreed to take
personal custody of them and to care for them, and
then forced the hospital board eventually to add a wing
to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
To house them.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Little by little, he saw most of them proved dramatically
as he talked to them, listened to what they had
to say, learned their interests, and introduced a range of
recreational activities, arts and crafts, and what we now call
physical therapy and occupational therapy. In listening to them, he
(03:19):
developed a treatment he called talk therapy what we now
call psychotherapy, and that led to the release of the
majority of them into civilian life. It was a miracle,
a revolution in the treatment of the mentally ill, which
has not changed since the beginnings of civilization. And this
(03:42):
was fifty years before Sigmund Freud was even born. Doctor
Benjamin rush Not Sigmund Freud discovered psychotherapy and other therapies
for the mentally ill a century before Freud started writing
about psychoanalysis. The American Psychiatric Association recognized Russia's great achievements
(04:05):
by putting his image on their official seal and designating
him Father of American Psychiatry. Now, Russia's deep concern for
the human condition included an equally deep love of individual liberty,
which is why he served in the Second Continental Congress
(04:26):
and signed the Declaration of Independence. But he was not
interested in the career in politics. He loved being a doctor,
treating and curing the ill, and he wanted to heal
the injured and cure the sixth. So after signing the
Declaration of Independence, he galloped out of Philadelphia and John
George Washington on the banks of the Delaware opposite Trenton,
(04:49):
New Jersey. On Christmas night seventeen seventy six, Washington's army
staged one of.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
The most daring attacks in the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
The road across the Delaware River through a driving snowstorm
and overwhelmed a garrison of a thousand Hessian soldiers had dawned.
As Hessian defenders fired back, some of their bullets inevitably
hit their marks. One man, unarmed, rushed into battle not
(05:22):
to fire a shot, but to stem the bleeding. Kneeling
over the fawn, doctor Benjamin Rush tried something no doctor
had ever done before, prevent death on the battlefield. Until then,
armies routinely left they're.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Wounded to die. Everywhere in the world.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
If a soldier could not run, walk, limp, or crawl
off the battlefield, he was left to die. There were
no doctors around to help, and there really was no choice.
There was no such thing as an antiseptic.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
The vast are you have.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
The badly injured in peace as well as war died
from blood poisoning except to semia. There was nothing anyone
could do. Troops couldn't help, Doctors or priests could do
nothing except pray, and that seldom saved any lives, at
least here on earth. For doctor Benjamin Rush, however, it
(06:24):
seemed obscene to let men die fighting and bleeding for
his country. After fighting ended at Trenton, he demanded that
Washington set up field hospitals of a sort. Washington commandeered
nearby houses, and Rush used them as field hospitals to
(06:44):
form what would later become the Army Medical Corps, the
first such corps in the world. Rush didn't save many
of the wounded, of course, there was no way he could.
Medicine and medical care were still too primitive. Anesesia, antiseptics, antibiotics,
none of those existed when he went to work trying
(07:06):
to save a soldier's life. When he had to amputate
a soldier's limb, he fed the patient whiskey or rum
and told him to fight on a piece of wood.
As hard as he could while Rush.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Went to work with his scalpel.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Within a minute or two, most soldiers passed out, and
infections would later kill at least two thirds.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Of them within a few days.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
But in listening to this, remember that anesesia didn't exist.
The hollow point needle, they weren't invented until eighteen fifty,
the stethoscope, blood transfusion, even simple aspirin. All of these
things were fifty to one hundred years in the future
when Rush walked onto that battlefield at in Trenton. Hospitals,
(07:55):
like battlefields, hospitals were places where the badly injured.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Or sick went to die.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
He didn't go to a hospital to have them save
your life. If you were sick, you stayed at home
and used worthless home remedies. Doctor Benjamin Rush only started
the scientific revolution in medicine and did not live long
enough to see any substantial progress in healthcare. But he
could and did begin the job, and because of his
(08:25):
status in Philadelphia society, he did live to see some
of the results.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Of his pioneering efforts.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Philadelphia at the time was America's political, cultural, and economic center,
and the signers of the Declaration of Independence were America's richest,
most powerful men. Rush was not born to wealth. He
was a farmer's son. He was superbly well educated. He
(08:52):
went to Princeton and then to the University of Edinburgh
Medical School, which was the best medical school in the world.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Time.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
He finished his studies in London, where Benjamin Franklin introduced
him to England's most distinguished thinkers and scientists. Although he
treated Philadelphia's rich and famous, he spent most of his
time treating the poor, even African Americans, the first Caucasian
(09:21):
doctor in America to do so.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And you're listening to Harlow Giles Unger tell the story
of doctor Benjamin Rush. And I thought I knew quite
a bit about Rush, but that medical unit and his
invention of the idea of a medical corps. I had
no idea that this was his way of volunteering in
our fight against the British. What a revolutionary on so
(09:43):
many fronts, from the abolition movement to women's suffrage and more.
This remarkable story one they're not teaching for certain in
schools across this country. The story of doctor Benjamin Rush
continues here on our American stories, and we continue with
(10:10):
our American stories, and with author Harlowe Giles Hunger And
he has written a terrific book about the life of
Benjamin Rush, called Doctor Benjamin Rush, the Founding Father.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Who healed a wounded Nation.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Let's pick up when we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Doctors north, Southeast and West refused even to consider treating
African Americans at the time, nor did many of them
consider treating the poor. The poor were in cities at least,
were dirty, They smelled, They couldn't read or write. The
slums they lived in had no water, no sewers. Conditions
(10:48):
were horrible in the slums of America's cities. No one
who called himself a doctor, even quacks, willingly set foot
in the slums or wanted anything to do with those
who lived there, except doctor Benjamin Rush. Listen to Rush
as he describes his daily rounds. I led a life
(11:13):
of constant labor. I led a life in which my
shop was crowded with the poor in the morning and
at meal times. And I visited nearly every street and
alley in.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
The city every day.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Often have I ascended the upper story of huts by
a ladder. I had to sit on beds. There were
no chairs, I risked not only taking their disease, but
being infected by vermin. I seldom went to bed before
twelve o'clock. Again, those are the words of doctor Benjamin
(11:51):
Rush when he was not treating patients, though he haunted
the Pennsylvania State Assembly demanding social reform aimed directly or
indirectly at improving the health of the city's population. Every
social advance that he demanded was tied to health. He
(12:13):
was the first to call for public sanitation. He wanted
to sweep away the garbage, the sewage, and stagnant water,
all of which he believed promoted disease. But science being
what it was, he had no way of proving it
and had to struggle with recalciprant, city and state officials
(12:35):
to get them to higher street cleaners. And the way
he convinced them was not by telling them how dirty
the city was. He showed them how they and the
city and the state would profit economically by cleaning the streets.
(12:56):
He championed abolition of slavery, and as president the Abolish Society,
he naturally decried the cruelties of slavery, But the only
way he could convince Pennsylvania legislators to abolish slavery was
to show them how the state would benefit economically by
freeing African Americans to make greater contributions to society. In
(13:19):
seventeen eighty he succeeded, and the Pennsylvania Assembly passed the
first state law in America banning slavery. But Rush didn't
stop there. He was distressed by the condition of free
blocks in Philadelphia. He walked directly into their midst to
(13:42):
treat them and their children medically. He was the first
white doctor in America to do so, and after winning
their trust, he urged them to build their own African
American church, the first such church in America. Not only
raised funds to build that church, he joined its parishioners
(14:03):
at its dedication. When people don't realize that founding fathers
did not invent slavery when they were born, the slaves
were already on the land almost a century actually, Virginia
tobacco growers, the great plantation owners at the turn of
(14:26):
the eighteenth century early seventeen hundreds, petitioned Queen Anne to
stop sending slaves there. The slave population in the so
called Sugar Islands at the time in the Caribbean had
grown so large that they just couldn't absorb anymore slaves.
But slavery slave trading had become a huge proportion of
(14:51):
the British government's income, so they just arbitrarily started dumping
slaves off the ships in Virginia for the plantation owners.
And they didn't want them. They petitioned Queen Anne to
not send any more slaves. Number one, they were illiterate.
Number two, they couldn't speak English. And number three, tobacco planting,
(15:14):
picking and harvesting and curing is a skilled trade. It
takes a lot of knowledge to do that carefully and
do it properly.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Queen Ann wouldn't listen.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
She needed those revenues, so she just kept sending slave
ships over here. Well, that generation plantation owner died, Another
generation grew up and died, and now we get to
the generation of our founding fathers, Jefferson, Washington and the others.
And they're born on lands in which by law, by
(15:51):
British law and subsequently early American laws, slaves were not
human beings. They were property, and they were as much
a part of each property as they were as trees were.
And you did not have the right. You could go
to jail if you freed your slaves.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Period.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
So it wasn't until they were in their adult years that.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Men like Washington.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
And quite a few others saw the cruelty of slavery,
the immorality of it, all the evils of slavery, and
try to figure out a way around the law. Well,
they didn't have control of they didn't have majorities in
the state assemblies, but they couldn't do anything under British law.
(16:44):
After the Revolution, they had a former government. First of all,
during the Confederation, each state was independent from the others.
That lasted until seventeen eighty nine.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Now you have a federal government. They had other things
to do right away.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
They had to set up an executive branch, had to
set up a judiciary, and that took years. Meanwhile, people
like Washington were looking into the law and they found
a way.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Around the law.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
But the only way around it was in your last
will and testament that superseded the law, the written law
of every state. And that's why Washington and his spouse
Martha freed there emancipated their slaves under Washington's will, and
(17:33):
Richard Henry Lee did many many Southern leaders did the
same thing, and that's all they could do under the
law at that time. At the time, there was an
army of quacks calling themselves doctors, who rode into every
town and village across America selling patent medicines. All of
(17:57):
them were nothing more than fruit flavored whiskey or rum
that cured patients by rendering them senselessly drunk and oblivious
to their illnesses their injuries. He charged them with killing
their patients rather than curing them. He called for a
law restricting the use of the title doctor to graduates
(18:19):
of recognized medical schools or to those who had served apprenticeships,
which was common in those days, apprenticeships with other doctors.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
And you're listening to Harlowe Giles Hunger, who's the author
of Doctor Benjamin Rush, The Founding Father who Healed a
Wounded Nation. He is also a former Distinguished Visiting Fellow
in American History at George Washington's Mount Vernon. If you're
ever in Washington, d c. Give yourself an extra day
and a half and go to Mount Vernon and then
go to Montpellier and to Course Jefferson's home Monticello in Charlottesville.
(18:53):
It's about an hour and a half due south, and
you'll see the residences of these great founders. It's a
beautiful field trip for a family, going through the beautiful
mountain country of Virginia and through Albermole County itself, which
is one of the most beautiful counties in the country.
The story of doctor Benjamin Rush, and my goodness, what
a beauty continues here on our American stories. And we
(19:38):
continue with our American stories and with Harlow Giles Hunger
as he continues to unpack the story of founding father,
doctor Benjamin Rush and his reforms and accomplishments in the
medical industry. Let's continue with Harlow Hunger.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
He wrote the first Code of Ethics for doctors, which
was still in effect in America until the Second World War.
And he wrote an even more important work called Medical
Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. It
was the first English language work written on psychiatry. It
(20:18):
became the basic textbook for studies in psychiatry in America
for the next century until the beginning of the twentieth century.
That work was so remarkable that, as I said before,
the American Psychiatric Association put his image on its official
seal and placed a bronze plot on his grave, declaring
(20:40):
him father of American psychiatry to this day. I don't
know why the world celebrates Freud instead of doctor Benjamin Rush.
I didn't mention that he was a great teacher, a
professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School,
and a professor of chemistry. He wrote the first American
(21:01):
chemistry book. He trained more than three thousand doctors, real
doctors with MD degrees, and there's still more. I told
you he was father of American psychiatry, but I didn't
tell you that he was also father of and you'll
(21:21):
never guess this, the father of American veterinary medicine. In
eighteen oh seven, he delivered a lecture, then published a
pamphlet on the medical care of domestic animals. It was
the first such work ever published in America. The idea
came to him years earlier. After he had finished his
(21:43):
medical studies in England, he went to Paris, and it
was in Paris that he visited what was then the
world's first school of veterinary medicine. It had been founded
to combat a cattle plague, but its efforts eventually improved
the quality of animal life so much that farmer revenues
(22:05):
began shooting up. In seventeen ninety five, Rush went to Washington,
who was a great farmer, Franklin, who wasn't a farmer,
but he was a brilliant scientist, and formed a group
of others to form a society to promote the development
of veterinary medicine in America, with Rush writing a pamphlet
(22:28):
citing the benefits of veterinary medicine to farmers and to
the nation's agriculture.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
At the time, ninety five.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Percent of Americans lived or worked or owned farms. Why
doesn't America celebrate this great founding father. Well, America doesn't
really celebrate any founding fathers anymore. The memories of both
Washington and Lincoln have been subsumed by shopping on what's
(22:57):
now called President's Day that both of them. But to
answer my own question about Rush statehood, Apart from the
fact that few Americans study or learn any American history anymore,
the fact is that doctor Benjamin Rush, America's greatest physician
(23:18):
at the time of the Revolution, the father of modern
American medical practice, knew next to nothing about treating the sick.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
No one did, No one did anyway in the world.
Nobody knew how to treat the sick.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
For centuries from the time of ancient Greece, doctors and
almost everyone else on earth believed that all human illnesses
resulted from poisons that traveled in the air and collected
in body fluids, in the blood and in the gastro
intestinal tract. And the remedy seemed simple. Drain the body
(24:01):
of its poisons by draining as much as possible of
its fluids.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
And you'll get rid of the illness.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Emptying the gut was simple with laxatives. Rush can talk
to a laxative that became known as thunderbolts. You can
use your imagination as to why after emptying the gut,
that left the vascular system. Well, you couldn't empty the
people's blood without killing them. Indeed, that's exactly what happened
(24:29):
to George Washington. At his insistence, he made the doctors
keep bleeding him to cure he had a throat infection,
to cure his infection, and then he finally died because
they just bled him to death. Rush and most doctors
(24:52):
were sensible enough to limit bleeding to between one and
two pints a day, about ten to twenty percent of
the patient's reservoir of blood. That's usually not enough to
send a patient into shock, but it is enough to
make the patient feel a lightheaded and less aware of
their pain and discomfort. And they felt that way, especially
(25:16):
so when a founding father, a doctor like Benjamin Rush,
who inspired all in his patients when he promised them
they'd feel better tomorrow. But bleeding had no effect at
all on the underlying interest. In twenty four hours, the
(25:38):
body itself replaced the blood it lost, and many patients
went on to die of the real disease. In August
and September of seventeen ninety three, the worst yellow fever epidemic.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
In American history crushed Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
It claimed more than five thousand people lives, more than
ten percent of the population of the city. Only Rush
and four other brave physician remained. Most people fled. Only
Rush and four other physicians remained to treat the stricken
with purge and bleed treatments that accomplished nothing well. The
(26:18):
Russian the other doctors believed they saved many lives. Those
who survived purge and bleed treatments. Either would have survived
the disease without bleeding or purging, or they didn't have
yellow fever to begin.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
With, and they simply got better.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So many people died, however, that critics, a few of
them other doctors from other cities, assailed Rush. One critic
a vicious British journalist who hated all things American and
had no knowledge of science or medicine. He called Russia
butcher and killer in the newspaper he published, for the
(26:57):
first time in his life, the radiant ring of light
that seemed to hover above Russian's sainted head dimmed for
the first time in his life, he seemed mortal. So
stung by the attacks by this journalist, he went into
(27:18):
court and sued the journalist for libel. Although he won
the case, his appearance in a courtroom and the public
airing of such vile epithets butcher, leech and others, even
by an ignorant journalist, tarnished the Rush name and left
him somewhat broken. Celebrated throughout his life as one whom
(27:41):
God had placed on earth to heal a sick Rush
now left the court room five thousand dollars richer, but
deeply wounded. He gave his award to charity, and in
eighteen hundred closed his medical practice and retreated to his
country home to update earlier editions of his various books
(28:04):
and published works.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
He never practiced medicine again.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
He died in eighteen thirteen and lies in Philadelphia's Christ
Church burial ground, near his dear friend Benjamin Franklin. But
without that flame of fame that illuminates Franklin's grave, Rush
deserves more. Thomas Jefferson said he knew no one among
(28:32):
the founding fathers more benevolent, and these are Jefferson's words,
no one more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or
more honest than doctor Benjamin Rush.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
John Adams agreed.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
He said that as a man of science, letters tastes sense, patriotism,
morality taken altogether, Rush has not left his equal in
America or the world. I agree and hope my book
will give this great American patriot, doctor Benjamin Rush, the
(29:12):
recognition he so deserves.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
And great job is always by Greg Hangler getting us
this story and producing it. In a special thanks to
Harlow Giles Hunger again his book is doctor Benjamin Rush,
the founding father who healed a wounded nation, and what
a story, the father of modern day psychiatry, the only
MD who signed the Declaration, He started essentially the Army
(29:37):
Medical Corps, and also in the end brought veterinary medicine
to America and the improvement in the end of our
agricultural economy. And by the way, it was very wise
of him to sell it as that as a benefit,
a public benefit of public good, and very wise to
do that as well. On how to treat the poor
and sanitary concerns. One of the first people in this
(29:59):
country think about public sanitation and all of this kind
of storytelling always is available here on our American Stories.
It's what we do. Folks bring stories like doctor Benjamin
Rush to you with unapologetic pride here on our American Stories.
And we continue with our American stories and up next well,
one of our favorite regular subjects American history. Doctor Benjamin
Rush is America's forgotten founding father. His signature on the
Declaration of Independence comes immediately before that other famous Benjamin,
and that of course would be Benjamin Franklin. The fruits
(00:31):
of Rush's underlying faith is the story though, that we're
about to hear from a prolific founding Father's biographer, Harlow
Giles Hunger. Harlowe is a New York Times bestselling author
of twenty eight books, including Doctor Benjamin Rush, The Founding
Father Will Healed a Wounded Nation. He is also a
former Distinguished Visiting Fellow in American History at George Washington's
(00:54):
Mount Vernon. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Doctor Benjamin Rush was one of the most important of
our founding fathers in many ways the most important. George
Washington was unquestionably the father of our political and military structure,
and Alexander Hamilton fathered our economic structure. But it was
doctor Benjamin Rush who fathered our social structure. He was
(01:21):
the only doctor with a medical school degree who signed
the Declaration of Independence, and with his signature, he began
a lifelong struggle for abolition of slavery, for women's rights,
for a ban on child labor. He fought for establishment
of universal, free public education. He was first to advocate
(01:45):
temperate use of alcohol and opposed tobacco use.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
He demanded that other.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Doctors treat the poor as well as the rich African
Americans as well as whites. Doctors wouldn't treat African Americans.
Then he founded two great schools of higher education in Pennsylvania,
Dickinson University in Carlisle and Franklin College now known as
Franklin and Marshall College. And he saved his alma Mada,
(02:14):
Princeton College from oblivion after British.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Troops burned it down.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Just after the young doctor rush One appointment to Philadelphia
Hospital as it was called, then he discovered a basement
filled with starving human beings chained to walls, lying in
their own filths, moaning, groaning, some with infected sores. Rush
stormed into the hospital doctor's office and demanded their release
(02:43):
and transfer into clean hospital rooms. He agreed to take
personal custody of them and to care for them, and
then forced the hospital board eventually to add a wing
to the hospital.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
To house them.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Little by little, he saw most of them proved dramatically
as he talked to them, listened to what they had
to say, learned their interests, and introduced a range of
recreational activities, arts and crafts, and what we now call
physical therapy and occupational therapy. In listening to them, he
(03:19):
developed a treatment he called talk therapy what we now
call psychotherapy, and that led to the release of the
majority of them into civilian life. It was a miracle,
a revolution in the treatment of the mentally ill, which
has not changed since the beginnings of civilization. And this
(03:42):
was fifty years before Sigmund Freud was even born. Doctor
Benjamin rush Not Sigmund Freud discovered psychotherapy and other therapies
for the mentally ill a century before Freud started writing
about psychoanalysis. The American Psychiatric Association recognized Russia's great achievements
(04:05):
by putting his image on their official seal and designating
him Father of American Psychiatry. Now, Russia's deep concern for
the human condition included an equally deep love of individual liberty,
which is why he served in the Second Continental Congress
(04:26):
and signed the Declaration of Independence. But he was not
interested in the career in politics. He loved being a doctor,
treating and curing the ill, and he wanted to heal
the injured and cure the sixth. So after signing the
Declaration of Independence, he galloped out of Philadelphia and John
George Washington on the banks of the Delaware opposite Trenton,
(04:49):
New Jersey. On Christmas night seventeen seventy six, Washington's army
staged one of.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
The most daring attacks in the Revolutionary War.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
The road across the Delaware River through a driving snowstorm
and overwhelmed a garrison of a thousand Hessian soldiers had dawned.
As Hessian defenders fired back, some of their bullets inevitably
hit their marks. One man, unarmed, rushed into battle not
(05:22):
to fire a shot, but to stem the bleeding. Kneeling
over the fawn, doctor Benjamin Rush tried something no doctor
had ever done before, prevent death on the battlefield. Until then,
armies routinely left they're.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Wounded to die. Everywhere in the world.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
If a soldier could not run, walk, limp, or crawl
off the battlefield, he was left to die. There were
no doctors around to help, and there really was no choice.
There was no such thing as an antiseptic.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
The vast are you have.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
The badly injured in peace as well as war died
from blood poisoning except to semia. There was nothing anyone
could do. Troops couldn't help, Doctors or priests could do
nothing except pray, and that seldom saved any lives, at
least here on earth. For doctor Benjamin Rush, however, it
(06:24):
seemed obscene to let men die fighting and bleeding for
his country. After fighting ended at Trenton, he demanded that
Washington set up field hospitals of a sort. Washington commandeered
nearby houses, and Rush used them as field hospitals to
(06:44):
form what would later become the Army Medical Corps, the
first such corps in the world. Rush didn't save many
of the wounded, of course, there was no way he could.
Medicine and medical care were still too primitive. Anesesia, antiseptics, antibiotics,
none of those existed when he went to work trying
(07:06):
to save a soldier's life. When he had to amputate
a soldier's limb, he fed the patient whiskey or rum
and told him to fight on a piece of wood.
As hard as he could while Rush.
Speaker 3 (07:19):
Went to work with his scalpel.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Within a minute or two, most soldiers passed out, and
infections would later kill at least two thirds.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Of them within a few days.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
But in listening to this, remember that anesesia didn't exist.
The hollow point needle, they weren't invented until eighteen fifty,
the stethoscope, blood transfusion, even simple aspirin. All of these
things were fifty to one hundred years in the future
when Rush walked onto that battlefield at in Trenton. Hospitals,
(07:55):
like battlefields, hospitals were places where the badly injured.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Or sick went to die.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
He didn't go to a hospital to have them save
your life. If you were sick, you stayed at home
and used worthless home remedies. Doctor Benjamin Rush only started
the scientific revolution in medicine and did not live long
enough to see any substantial progress in healthcare. But he
could and did begin the job, and because of his
(08:25):
status in Philadelphia society, he did live to see some
of the results.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Of his pioneering efforts.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Philadelphia at the time was America's political, cultural, and economic center,
and the signers of the Declaration of Independence were America's richest,
most powerful men. Rush was not born to wealth. He
was a farmer's son. He was superbly well educated. He
(08:52):
went to Princeton and then to the University of Edinburgh
Medical School, which was the best medical school in the world.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Time.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
He finished his studies in London, where Benjamin Franklin introduced
him to England's most distinguished thinkers and scientists. Although he
treated Philadelphia's rich and famous, he spent most of his
time treating the poor, even African Americans, the first Caucasian
(09:21):
doctor in America to do so.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
And you're listening to Harlow Giles Unger tell the story
of doctor Benjamin Rush. And I thought I knew quite
a bit about Rush, but that medical unit and his
invention of the idea of a medical corps. I had
no idea that this was his way of volunteering in
our fight against the British. What a revolutionary on so
(09:43):
many fronts, from the abolition movement to women's suffrage and more.
This remarkable story one they're not teaching for certain in
schools across this country. The story of doctor Benjamin Rush
continues here on our American stories, and we continue with
(10:10):
our American stories, and with author Harlowe Giles Hunger And
he has written a terrific book about the life of
Benjamin Rush, called Doctor Benjamin Rush, the Founding Father.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Who healed a wounded Nation.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Let's pick up when we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Doctors north, Southeast and West refused even to consider treating
African Americans at the time, nor did many of them
consider treating the poor. The poor were in cities at least,
were dirty, They smelled, They couldn't read or write. The
slums they lived in had no water, no sewers. Conditions
(10:48):
were horrible in the slums of America's cities. No one
who called himself a doctor, even quacks, willingly set foot
in the slums or wanted anything to do with those
who lived there, except doctor Benjamin Rush. Listen to Rush
as he describes his daily rounds. I led a life
(11:13):
of constant labor. I led a life in which my
shop was crowded with the poor in the morning and
at meal times. And I visited nearly every street and
alley in.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
The city every day.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Often have I ascended the upper story of huts by
a ladder. I had to sit on beds. There were
no chairs, I risked not only taking their disease, but
being infected by vermin. I seldom went to bed before
twelve o'clock. Again, those are the words of doctor Benjamin
(11:51):
Rush when he was not treating patients, though he haunted
the Pennsylvania State Assembly demanding social reform aimed directly or
indirectly at improving the health of the city's population. Every
social advance that he demanded was tied to health. He
(12:13):
was the first to call for public sanitation. He wanted
to sweep away the garbage, the sewage, and stagnant water,
all of which he believed promoted disease. But science being
what it was, he had no way of proving it
and had to struggle with recalciprant, city and state officials
(12:35):
to get them to higher street cleaners. And the way
he convinced them was not by telling them how dirty
the city was. He showed them how they and the
city and the state would profit economically by cleaning the streets.
(12:56):
He championed abolition of slavery, and as president the Abolish Society,
he naturally decried the cruelties of slavery, But the only
way he could convince Pennsylvania legislators to abolish slavery was
to show them how the state would benefit economically by
freeing African Americans to make greater contributions to society. In
(13:19):
seventeen eighty he succeeded, and the Pennsylvania Assembly passed the
first state law in America banning slavery. But Rush didn't
stop there. He was distressed by the condition of free
blocks in Philadelphia. He walked directly into their midst to
(13:42):
treat them and their children medically. He was the first
white doctor in America to do so, and after winning
their trust, he urged them to build their own African
American church, the first such church in America. Not only
raised funds to build that church, he joined its parishioners
(14:03):
at its dedication. When people don't realize that founding fathers
did not invent slavery when they were born, the slaves
were already on the land almost a century actually, Virginia
tobacco growers, the great plantation owners at the turn of
(14:26):
the eighteenth century early seventeen hundreds, petitioned Queen Anne to
stop sending slaves there. The slave population in the so
called Sugar Islands at the time in the Caribbean had
grown so large that they just couldn't absorb anymore slaves.
But slavery slave trading had become a huge proportion of
(14:51):
the British government's income, so they just arbitrarily started dumping
slaves off the ships in Virginia for the plantation owners.
And they didn't want them. They petitioned Queen Anne to
not send any more slaves. Number one, they were illiterate.
Number two, they couldn't speak English. And number three, tobacco planting,
(15:14):
picking and harvesting and curing is a skilled trade. It
takes a lot of knowledge to do that carefully and
do it properly.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Queen Ann wouldn't listen.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
She needed those revenues, so she just kept sending slave
ships over here. Well, that generation plantation owner died, Another
generation grew up and died, and now we get to
the generation of our founding fathers, Jefferson, Washington and the others.
And they're born on lands in which by law, by
(15:51):
British law and subsequently early American laws, slaves were not
human beings. They were property, and they were as much
a part of each property as they were as trees were.
And you did not have the right. You could go
to jail if you freed your slaves.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Period.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
So it wasn't until they were in their adult years that.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Men like Washington.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
And quite a few others saw the cruelty of slavery,
the immorality of it, all the evils of slavery, and
try to figure out a way around the law. Well,
they didn't have control of they didn't have majorities in
the state assemblies, but they couldn't do anything under British law.
(16:44):
After the Revolution, they had a former government. First of all,
during the Confederation, each state was independent from the others.
That lasted until seventeen eighty nine.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Now you have a federal government. They had other things
to do right away.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
They had to set up an executive branch, had to
set up a judiciary, and that took years. Meanwhile, people
like Washington were looking into the law and they found
a way.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Around the law.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
But the only way around it was in your last
will and testament that superseded the law, the written law
of every state. And that's why Washington and his spouse
Martha freed there emancipated their slaves under Washington's will, and
(17:33):
Richard Henry Lee did many many Southern leaders did the
same thing, and that's all they could do under the
law at that time. At the time, there was an
army of quacks calling themselves doctors, who rode into every
town and village across America selling patent medicines. All of
(17:57):
them were nothing more than fruit flavored whiskey or rum
that cured patients by rendering them senselessly drunk and oblivious
to their illnesses their injuries. He charged them with killing
their patients rather than curing them. He called for a
law restricting the use of the title doctor to graduates
(18:19):
of recognized medical schools or to those who had served apprenticeships,
which was common in those days, apprenticeships with other doctors.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
And you're listening to Harlowe Giles Hunger, who's the author
of Doctor Benjamin Rush, The Founding Father who Healed a
Wounded Nation. He is also a former Distinguished Visiting Fellow
in American History at George Washington's Mount Vernon. If you're
ever in Washington, d c. Give yourself an extra day
and a half and go to Mount Vernon and then
go to Montpellier and to Course Jefferson's home Monticello in Charlottesville.
(18:53):
It's about an hour and a half due south, and
you'll see the residences of these great founders. It's a
beautiful field trip for a family, going through the beautiful
mountain country of Virginia and through Albermole County itself, which
is one of the most beautiful counties in the country.
The story of doctor Benjamin Rush, and my goodness, what
a beauty continues here on our American stories. And we
(19:38):
continue with our American stories and with Harlow Giles Hunger
as he continues to unpack the story of founding father,
doctor Benjamin Rush and his reforms and accomplishments in the
medical industry. Let's continue with Harlow Hunger.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
He wrote the first Code of Ethics for doctors, which
was still in effect in America until the Second World War.
And he wrote an even more important work called Medical
Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind. It
was the first English language work written on psychiatry. It
(20:18):
became the basic textbook for studies in psychiatry in America
for the next century until the beginning of the twentieth century.
That work was so remarkable that, as I said before,
the American Psychiatric Association put his image on its official
seal and placed a bronze plot on his grave, declaring
(20:40):
him father of American psychiatry to this day. I don't
know why the world celebrates Freud instead of doctor Benjamin Rush.
I didn't mention that he was a great teacher, a
professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School,
and a professor of chemistry. He wrote the first American
(21:01):
chemistry book. He trained more than three thousand doctors, real
doctors with MD degrees, and there's still more. I told
you he was father of American psychiatry, but I didn't
tell you that he was also father of and you'll
(21:21):
never guess this, the father of American veterinary medicine. In
eighteen oh seven, he delivered a lecture, then published a
pamphlet on the medical care of domestic animals. It was
the first such work ever published in America. The idea
came to him years earlier. After he had finished his
(21:43):
medical studies in England, he went to Paris, and it
was in Paris that he visited what was then the
world's first school of veterinary medicine. It had been founded
to combat a cattle plague, but its efforts eventually improved
the quality of animal life so much that farmer revenues
(22:05):
began shooting up. In seventeen ninety five, Rush went to Washington,
who was a great farmer, Franklin, who wasn't a farmer,
but he was a brilliant scientist, and formed a group
of others to form a society to promote the development
of veterinary medicine in America, with Rush writing a pamphlet
(22:28):
citing the benefits of veterinary medicine to farmers and to
the nation's agriculture.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
At the time, ninety five.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Percent of Americans lived or worked or owned farms. Why
doesn't America celebrate this great founding father. Well, America doesn't
really celebrate any founding fathers anymore. The memories of both
Washington and Lincoln have been subsumed by shopping on what's
(22:57):
now called President's Day that both of them. But to
answer my own question about Rush statehood, Apart from the
fact that few Americans study or learn any American history anymore,
the fact is that doctor Benjamin Rush, America's greatest physician
(23:18):
at the time of the Revolution, the father of modern
American medical practice, knew next to nothing about treating the sick.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
No one did, No one did anyway in the world.
Nobody knew how to treat the sick.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
For centuries from the time of ancient Greece, doctors and
almost everyone else on earth believed that all human illnesses
resulted from poisons that traveled in the air and collected
in body fluids, in the blood and in the gastro
intestinal tract. And the remedy seemed simple. Drain the body
(24:01):
of its poisons by draining as much as possible of
its fluids.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
And you'll get rid of the illness.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Emptying the gut was simple with laxatives. Rush can talk
to a laxative that became known as thunderbolts. You can
use your imagination as to why after emptying the gut,
that left the vascular system. Well, you couldn't empty the
people's blood without killing them. Indeed, that's exactly what happened
(24:29):
to George Washington. At his insistence, he made the doctors
keep bleeding him to cure he had a throat infection,
to cure his infection, and then he finally died because
they just bled him to death. Rush and most doctors
(24:52):
were sensible enough to limit bleeding to between one and
two pints a day, about ten to twenty percent of
the patient's reservoir of blood. That's usually not enough to
send a patient into shock, but it is enough to
make the patient feel a lightheaded and less aware of
their pain and discomfort. And they felt that way, especially
(25:16):
so when a founding father, a doctor like Benjamin Rush,
who inspired all in his patients when he promised them
they'd feel better tomorrow. But bleeding had no effect at
all on the underlying interest. In twenty four hours, the
(25:38):
body itself replaced the blood it lost, and many patients
went on to die of the real disease. In August
and September of seventeen ninety three, the worst yellow fever epidemic.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
In American history crushed Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
It claimed more than five thousand people lives, more than
ten percent of the population of the city. Only Rush
and four other brave physician remained. Most people fled. Only
Rush and four other physicians remained to treat the stricken
with purge and bleed treatments that accomplished nothing well. The
(26:18):
Russian the other doctors believed they saved many lives. Those
who survived purge and bleed treatments. Either would have survived
the disease without bleeding or purging, or they didn't have
yellow fever to begin.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
With, and they simply got better.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So many people died, however, that critics, a few of
them other doctors from other cities, assailed Rush. One critic
a vicious British journalist who hated all things American and
had no knowledge of science or medicine. He called Russia
butcher and killer in the newspaper he published, for the
(26:57):
first time in his life, the radiant ring of light
that seemed to hover above Russian's sainted head dimmed for
the first time in his life, he seemed mortal. So
stung by the attacks by this journalist, he went into
(27:18):
court and sued the journalist for libel. Although he won
the case, his appearance in a courtroom and the public
airing of such vile epithets butcher, leech and others, even
by an ignorant journalist, tarnished the Rush name and left
him somewhat broken. Celebrated throughout his life as one whom
(27:41):
God had placed on earth to heal a sick Rush
now left the court room five thousand dollars richer, but
deeply wounded. He gave his award to charity, and in
eighteen hundred closed his medical practice and retreated to his
country home to update earlier editions of his various books
(28:04):
and published works.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
He never practiced medicine again.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
He died in eighteen thirteen and lies in Philadelphia's Christ
Church burial ground, near his dear friend Benjamin Franklin. But
without that flame of fame that illuminates Franklin's grave, Rush
deserves more. Thomas Jefferson said he knew no one among
(28:32):
the founding fathers more benevolent, and these are Jefferson's words,
no one more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or
more honest than doctor Benjamin Rush.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
John Adams agreed.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
He said that as a man of science, letters tastes sense, patriotism,
morality taken altogether, Rush has not left his equal in
America or the world. I agree and hope my book
will give this great American patriot, doctor Benjamin Rush, the
(29:12):
recognition he so deserves.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
And great job is always by Greg Hangler getting us
this story and producing it. In a special thanks to
Harlow Giles Hunger again his book is doctor Benjamin Rush,
the founding father who healed a wounded nation, and what
a story, the father of modern day psychiatry, the only
MD who signed the Declaration, He started essentially the Army
(29:37):
Medical Corps, and also in the end brought veterinary medicine
to America and the improvement in the end of our
agricultural economy. And by the way, it was very wise
of him to sell it as that as a benefit,
a public benefit of public good, and very wise to
do that as well. On how to treat the poor
and sanitary concerns. One of the first people in this
(29:59):
country think about public sanitation and all of this kind
of storytelling always is available here on our American Stories.
It's what we do. Folks bring stories like doctor Benjamin
Rush to you with unapologetic pride here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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