BENJAMIN, a celebrated American physician, born on the 5th January 1745, near Bristol in Pennsylvania, was descended from a family who were originally Quakers, and who had accompanied Penn in 1683 to his infant colony. He lost his father at an early age, and having been first placed by his mother at a school kept by the Rev. S. Finley, he proceeded to finish his classical education at the college of Princeton, and there took the degree of Bachelor of Arts before he was sixteen. He then determined to make the profession of physic the pursuit of his life, and went to study it, first under the care of Dr Redman of Philadelphia, and then at Edinburgh, where he was created a doctor of physic in 1768. At the time of his return from Europe, a new school of medicine was about to be founded in Philadelphia, and he became professor of chemistry immediately upon his arrival.

In 1776 Dr Rush began to take an active part, with the rest of his countrymen, in the political struggle of the day, and he was chosen a member of Congress for the state of Pennsylvania; in 1777 he was appointed surgeon-general to the army, and not long afterwards became physician-general. He also contributed his best efforts to the improvement of the internal government of the state which he represented. But he soon withdrew his attention from political affairs, in order to devote it exclusively to medical and literary subjects; and he continued to be actively engaged in the practice of physic for the remainder of his life. In 1776 he married Miss Julia Stockton of New Jersey. He had by her thirteen children, nine of whom survived him in respectability and prosperity. In 1791, when the two medical colleges of Philadelphia were incorporated into a single university, he was appointed professor of the institutes of medicine, and of clinical practice. In 1793 he greatly distinguished himself by the new and apparently successful modes of practice that he introduced in the epidemic yellow fever, which was then causing great mortality throughout the United States, and which, shortly before his death, he was induced to believe not contagious, but derived from some general causes independently of the previous existence of the disease. He died on the 13th of April 1813, after an illness of five days, of a typhus fever, with some pulmonary symptoms. He had for a considerable part of his life been threatened with consumption, but had combated its attacks with unusual success. The number of his writings is considerable in proportion to their bulk; the times and the state of society in which he lived being such as to produce rather hasty and spirited than highly-finished compositions.

His inaugural dissertation was entitled De Concezione chlorum in ventriculo, and contained an explanation of the opinions relating to digestion, which he had learned from Dr Cullen, Edinburgh, 1768; Accounts of the Effects of the Stramonium, American Trans., ii.; Lectures, 1770; On the Utility of the newly-invented Electro-Med. Obs. Exp. 1770, addressed to Dr Hock; Lectures on Natural History of Medicines among the Indians of North America, an anniversary oration delivered in 1774; Remarks on Bilious Fevers, addressed to Dr Hock, Med. Obs. Exp. v.; Account of the Influence of the Revolution on the Human Body, with Observations on the Diseases of Military Hospitals; Inquiry into the Cause of the Increase of Bilious and Intermittent Fevers in Pennsylvania, American Trans. ii.; Observations on Tetanus; Inquiry into the Influence of Physical Causes upon the Moral Faculty; Remarks on the Effects of Ardent Spirits upon the Body and Mind; Inquiry into the Causes and Cure of Pulmonary Consumption, in his Medical Inquirer and Observations, i. Phil. 1788. His grand object in the cure of consumption is to remove all morbid effects, and everything which will cause the patient to take exercise, or employ himself in any work which has become somewhat fashionable in England of late years, from its frequent success as a temporary palliative. The subject is continued in the second volume of the Inquiries, published in 1793; and bleeding is very strongly recommended in the earlier and only curable stages. Consumption, he observes, is common in America, though scrofula scarcely ever occurs; and it has sometimes been known to be clearly communicated by infection to the Negroes belonging to a family, who had, of course, no consanguinity that could account for a similarity of constitution. Five volumes, in the whole of this collection, appeared from 1783 to 1793; a second edition was published in 1804, in four volumes 8vo; a third in 1805, revised and enlarged, with a continuation of the Histories of the Yellow Fever from 1793 to 1809; A Defence of Blood-letting as a Remedy for Certain Diseases; A View of the State of Medicine in Philadelphia; An Inquiry into the Sources of the Unusual Forms of Summer and Autumnal Diseases in the United States; and the recantation of his opinion of the contagious nature of the yellow fever, already mentioned; Information to Europeans disposed to Emigrate to the United States, in a Letter to a Friend; Observations on the Population of Pennsylvania; Observations on Tobacco; A new Mode of Bleeding the Gall-Peep; a Lecture, repeated, Phil. 1788, 8vo; Essay on the Study of Latin, and Greek, among American Museums; condemning it as a waste of time, oppressive to the prejudices who are tortured into their parts of speech, to the great scandal of a humane and republican country, and subversive of a proper respect for the rights of boys, and, consequently, for the rights of man. Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1793, 8vo; containing a republication of the last article, together with the author's eulogiums on Dr Cullen and on Professor Rittenhouse, delivered in 1790 and 1795, and with some other miscellaneous lectures of less moment, 1806; Lectures on the Cause of Animal Life, 1791; Account of the Sugar-Mustard Tree, American Trans. iii. 1792; Observations on the Black Color of the Negro, American Trans. iv., 1792, withdrawing the blackness to leprosy; History of the Yellow Fever, 1794, this celebrated epidemic has been translated into French and Spanish. At the time of its publication an almost superstitious dread was entertained by medical men of the use of the lancet in idiopathic fever; and few books have ever had so powerful and extensive an effect in altering the general treatment of a disease as this history had produced in every part of the world. Probably, indeed, it may have carried a number of the younger and bolder practitioners into an opposite extreme; but, with respect to the author's claims to merit on the occasion, it must be allowed that the innovation showed an uncommon combination of courage with talent and good sense; and the accurate description of the disease that he has given us fully establishes his claim to the character of an accurate pathologist.

On the Symptoms and Cure of Dropsy, and especially of Water in the Head, 1793; An Account of the Influence of Philadelphia in 1789, 1790, 1791; Observations on the State of the Body and Mind in Old Age, 1794; Observations on the Nature and Cure of Gout and Hydrophobia, 1797; Inquiry into the Cause and Cure of the Chlorotic Infants, 1797; Observations on Cyananche Trachealis, 1797; Introductory Lectures, 1801, ed. ii. 1811; with ten new introductory lectures, and two lectures on the Pleasures of the Senses and of the Mind. In 1809 he published the works of Sydenham and of Cullen, with Notes, and in 1810 those of Pringle and Hill. His Dictionary of Medicine, 8vo, 1812, an elaborate work which had long been impatiently anticipated; A Letter on Hydrophobia, 1813, addressed to Dr Hosack, and containing additional reasons for believing the seat of the disease to be chiefly in the blood-vessels; an opinion which in all probability has at least tended to shorten the sufferings of several individuals on whom the experiment of profuse depletion has been tried. Dr Rush's numerous publications obtained him many marks of respect from his contemporaries, and procured him admission, as an honorary member, into the most distinguished literary and philosophical societies of Europe. His name was familiar to the medical world as the Sydenham of America. His accurate observations and correct deductions of epidemic diseases has well entitled him to this distinction; while in his original energy of his reasoning, he far excelled his prototype. His liberal and unassuming character, indeed, appears to have been greatly influenced by the moral and political sentiments which were prevalent in his day. A love of innovation led him to that proud defiance of established authority which is just as likely to be pernicious as to be salutary. The study of the learned languages he deprecated, in one of his early essays, as unfit for a republican education; and this was the first step to the true Jacobin doctrine, that it was uxoripublican and aristocratical to have received any education whatever. In physic, his rejection of the prejudices of antiquity was somewhat more consistent with moderation, and the reforms that he attempted was occasionally more successful than his literary speculations; nor can it be doubted that there was a multitude of original suggestions in his works which may very probably be found capable of affording valuable hints to the lovers of medical experiments.

(Hosack and Francis in the American Med. Philos. Register; Chalmers's Biographical Dict., xxv., London, 1816, 8vo.)

a seaport and market town of Ireland, on a headland stretching into the Irish Sea, in the county and 14 miles N.E. of Dublin. The chief buildings are the Ro- Rushworth, man Catholic chapel, and a martello tower which defends the harbour. Kenure Park, a fine mansion near the town, was once the seat of the Duke of Ormond. Rush harbour has recently been improved, and is capable of receiving ves- sels of 50 tons burden. Some trade and fishery is carried on here. Pop. 1496.