about 12 miles from the city of Philadelphia. His ancestors followed William Penn from England to Pennsylvania, in the year 1693. They chiefly belonged to the society of Quakers, and were all, as well as his parents, distinguished for the industry, the virtue, and the piety, characteristic of their sect. His grandfather, James Rush, whose occupation was that of a gunsmith, resided on his estate near Philadelphia, and died in the year 1727. His son John, the father of Dr. Rush, inherited both his trade and his farm, and was equally distinguished for his industry and ingenuity. He died while his son Benjamin was yet young, but left him to the care of an excellent and pious mother, who took an active interest in his education and welfare.

of piety he had

ceived from his parents :

-

"I have acquired and received nothing from the world which I prize so highly as the religious principles I inherited from them; and I possess nothing that I value so much as the innocence and purity of their characters."

But this was not the only source of that virtue and religion for which he was so eminently distinguished. His mother, as if influenced with a presentiment of the future destinies of her son, resolved to give him the advan tages of the best education which our country then afforded. For this purpose he was sent, at the early age of eight or nine years, to the West Nottingham Grammar School, and placed under the care of his maternal uncle, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Finley, an ex

cellent

cellent scholar and an eminent teacher, and whose talents and learning afterwards elevated him to the Presidency of the College of Princeton. At this school young Rush remained five years, for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge of the Greek and Latin languages, and other branches necessary to qualify him, as preparatory for a collegiate course of study. But under the tuition and guidance of Dr. Finley, he was not only in structed in classical literature; he also acquired what was of no less importance, and which characterized him through life—a habit of study and observation, a reverence for the Christian religion, and the habitual performance of the duties it inculcates; for his accomplished and pious instructor not only regarded the temporal, but the spiritual, welfare of those committed to his care.

At the age of 14, after completing his course of classical studies, he was removed to the College of Princeton, then under the superintendance of President Davies, one of the most eloquent preachers and learned divines our country has produced.

At College, our pupil not only performed his duties with his usual attention and success, but he became distinguished for his talents, his uncommon progress in his studies, and especially for his eloquence in public speaking. For this latter acquirement he was doubtless indebted to the example set before him by President Da vies, whose talents as a pulpit orator were universally acknowledged, and were frequently the theme of his pupil's admiration.

Dr. Rush received the degree

of Bachelor of Arts in the autumn' of 1760, at the early age of 15. The next succeeding six years of his life were devoted to the study of medicine, under the direction of Dr. John Redman, at that time an eminent practitioner in the city of Philadelphia. Upon commencing the study of medicine, the writings of Hippocrates were amongst the very first works which attracted his attention; and as an evidence of the early impression they made upon his mind, and of the attachment he had formed to them, let it be remembered that Dr. Rush, when a student of medicine, translated the aphorisms of Hippocrates from the Greek into his vernacular tongue, in the 17th year of his age. From this early exercise he probably derived that talent of investigation, that spirit of inquiry, and those extensive views of the nature and causes of disease, which give value to his writings, and have added important benefits to the science of medicine. The same mode of acquiring knowledge which was recommended by Mr. Locke, with the very manner of his commonplace book, was also early adopted by Dr. Rush, and was daily continued to the last of his life. To his records, made in 1762, we are at this day indebted for many important facts illustrative of the yellow fever, which prevailed in, and desolated the city of Philadelphia, in that memorable year. Even in reading, it was the practice of Dr Rush, and for which he was first indebted to his friend Dr. Franklin, to mark with a pen' or pencil any important fact, or any peculiar expression, remarkable either for its strength or its

elegance.

In the spring of 1768, after defending an inaugural dissertation "De Coctione Ciborum in Ventriculo," he received the degree of Doctor of Medicine. In that exercise which was written with classical purity and elegance, it was the object of Dr. Rush to illustrate by experiment an opinion that had been expressed by Dr. Cullen, that the aliment, in a few hours after being received into the stomach, undergoes the acetous fermentation. This fact he established by three different experiments made upon himself; experiments which a mind less ardent in the pursuit of truth would readily have declined.

From Edinburgh Dr. Rush proceeded to London, where, in attendance upon hospitals of that city, the lectures of its celebrated teachers, and the society of the learned, he made many accessions to the stock of knowledge he had already acquired.

In the spring of 1769, after visiting Paris, he returned to his native country, and immediately commenced the practice of physic in the city of Philadelphia, in

which he soon became eminently distinguished.

Few men have entered the profession in any age or country with more numerous qualifications as a physician than those possessed by Dr. Rush. His gentleness of manner, his sympathy with the distressed, his kindness to the poor, his varied and extensive erudition, his professional acquirements, and his faithful attention to the sick, all united in procuring for him the esteem, the respect, and the confidence of his fellow-citizens, and thereby introducing him to an extensive and lucrative practice.

It is abserved, as an evidence of the diligence and fidelity with which Dr. Rush devoted himself to his medical studies, during the six years he had been the pupil of Dr. Redman, that he absented himself from his business but two days in the whole of that period of time. I believe it may also be said, that from the time he commenced the practice of medicine to the termination of his long and valuable life, except when confined by sickness, or occupied by business of a public nature, he never absented himself from the city of Philadelphia, nor omitted the performance of his professional duties a single day. It is also stated that during the thirty years of his attendance as a physician to the Pennsylvania hospital, such was his punctuality, his love of order, and his sense of duty, that he not only made his daily visit to that institution, but was never absent ten minutes after the appointed hour of prescribing.

In a few months after his establishment in Philadelphia, Dr.

Rush

Rush was elected a Professor in the Medical School, which had then been recently established by the laudable exertions of Dr. Shippen, Dr. Kuhn, Dr. Morgan, and Dr. Bond. For this station his talents and education peculiarly qualified him. As in the case of Boerhaave, such too had been the attention bestowed by Dr. Rush upon every branch of medicine, that he was equally prepared to fill any department in which his services might be required.

The Professorships of Anatomy, the Theory and Practice of Physic, Clinical Medicine, and the Materia Medica, being already occupied, he was placed in the chair of Chemistry, which he filled in such manner as immediately to attract the attention of all who heard him, not only to the branch he taught, but to the learning, the abilities, and eloquence of the teacher.

In the year 1789 Dr. Rush was elected the successor of Dr. Morgan, to the chair of the Theory and Practice of Physic. In 1791, upon an union being effected between the College of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania, he was appointed to the Professorship of the Institutes of Medicine and Clinical Practice; and in 1805, upon the resignation of the learned and venerable Dr. Kuhn, he was chosen to the united Professorships of the Theory and Practice of Physic and of Clinical Medicine, which he held the remainder of his life. To the success with which these several branches of medicine were taught by Dr. Rush, the popularity of his lectures, the yearly increase of the number of his pupils, the un

exampled growth of the Medical School of Philadelphia, and the consequent diffusion of medical learning, bear ample testimony; for, with all due respect to the distinguished talents, with which the other Professorships of that University have hitherto been, and still continue to be filled, it will be admitted that to the learning, the abilities, and the eloquence of Dr. Rush, it owes much of that celebrity and elevation to which it has attained. What Boerhaave was to the Medical School of Leyden, or Dr. Cullen to that of Edinburgh, Dr. Rush was to the University of Pennsylvania.

But Dr. Rush did not confine his attention and pursuits either to the practice of medicine, or to the duties of his Professorship : his ardent mind did not permit him to be an inactive spectator of those important public events which occurred in the early period of his life.

The American revolution; the independence of his country; the establishment of a new constitution of government for the United States, and the amelioration of the constitution of his own particular state, all successively interested his feelings, and induced him to take an active concern in the scenes that were passing. He held a seat in the celebrated Congress of 1776, as a representative of the state of Pennsylvania, and subscribed the ever-memorable instrument of American independence. In 1777 he was appointed Physician General of the Military Hospital for the Middle Department; and in the year 1787 he received the addi

tional gratification and evidence of his country's confidence in his talents, his integrity, and his patriotism, by being chosen a member of the State Convention for the adoption of the Federal Constitution.

These great events being accomplished, Dr. Rush gradually retired from political life, resolved to dedicate the remainder of his days to the practice of his profession, the performance of his collegiate duties, and the publication of those doctrines and principles in medicine which he considered calculated to advance the interests of his favourite science, or to diminish the evils of human life. In a letter which I received from him as early as the year 1794, he expresses this determination, adding, "I have lately become a mere spectator of all public events." And in a conversation on this subject, during the last two years of his life, he expressed to me the high gratification which he enjoyed in his medical studies and pursuits, and his regret that he had not at a much earlier period withdrawn his attention from all other subjects, and bestowed it exclusively upon his profession.

Such was the attachment of Dr. Rush to his profession, that, speaking of his approaching dissolution, he remarks, when that time shall come, I shall relinquish many attractions to life, and among them a pleasure which to me has no equal in human pursuits; I mean that which I derive from studying, tea hing, and practising medicine." But he loved it as a science; principles in medicine were the great objects

of all his inquiries. He has well observed, that medicine without principles is a humble art and a degrading occupation: but, directed by principles,-the only sure guide to a safe and successful practice,―it imparts the highest elevation to the intellectual and moral character of man.

But the high professional character and attainments of Dr. Rush did not alone display themselves in his skill as a physician, or his abilities as a teacher; he was equally distinguished as a writer and an author.

The present occasion does not allow me to recite even the numerous subjects of his medical publications; much less does it afford an opportunity to review the opinions they contain. I must however, observe generally, that the numerous facts and principles which the writings of Dr. Rush contain, the doctrines they inculcate relative to the nature and causes of disease, and the improvements they have introduced into the practice of medicine, recommend them to an attentive perusal and study, while the perspicuity and elegance of the style in which they are written give them an additional claim to attention as among the finest models of composition. The same remarks are equally applicable to the epistolary style of Dr. Rush, and that of his conversation; in both of which he eminently excelled.

Mr. Fox declared in the British House of Commons that he had learned more from Mr. Burke's conversation than from all the books he had ever read. It may also be observed of the conversa, tion of Dr. Rush, that such were

the