Medical Valor in Plague Time: Dr. Benjamin Rush

Abstract

Benjamin Rush (1746–1813) ranks as one of the greatest physician-public servants in US history. A prodigy who remains the youngest graduate in the history of Princeton University, author of the first American textbook of chemistry, one of the youngest signers of the Declaration of Independence, Treasurer of the US Mint, “father of American psychiatry,” founder of Dickinson College, and namesake of Rush Medical College in Chicago, Rush is perhaps most deserving of the attention of radiology learners and educators for his response to one of the deadliest epidemics in US history, the yellow fever outbreak that decimated the nation's capital, Philadelphia, in 1793.