Learn Our History Today: On December 24, 1745, famous patriot and physician Dr. Benjamin Rush was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Educated at numerous universities during his youth, Benjamin Rush originally intended to be a lawyer after his graduation from Princeton in 1760, but soon became intrigued by the field of Medicine. He traveled to Scotland, then the medical capital of the world, and earned a medical doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. After a few years spent travelling abroad, Rush returned home to Philadelphia where opened up a private practice. At that time, the American Revolution was just beginning to heat up, and Rush became one of its earliest and staunchest supporters. He would later go on to sign the Declaration of Independence, before offering his services to George Washington, who quickly appointed him Surgeon General of the Continental Army. Upon his appointment, Rush was abhorred by the conditions of the army, and it was blaringly apparent to him that their camps served as a breeding ground for every type of disease imaginable. He soon began writing many controversial critiques of the army and the conditions it lived under, all of which reflected poorly on its leader, General Washington. Taking these criticisms as a personal affront, Washington was no longer on speaking terms with Rush, and in the end Rush resigned, protesting that his writings had merely been critiques and weren’t in any way personal. During the later years of the revolution and in the years following, Rush remained involved in the construction of the new nation, campaigning hard in favor of the newly written Constitution. He would also go on to form the first college in the new United States---Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Rush took the name from Pennsylvania’s governor, John Dickinson, and gave the new school the motto: Tuta liberta, which means, “a bulwark of liberty.” In his later years, Benjamin Rush continued to live a public life until his death, writing numerous papers on social issues, including slavery, capital punishment, and women’s rights.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:08:19 +0000
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