This volume covers 43 years of Benjamin Rush's moderately long, inordinately full life, which ended in 1813, shortly after he had reached 68. Most people, if they know anything about Rush, think of him principally as a physician. He is considered one of the most influential doctors in American history. The medical side of Rush's career is not, however, emphasized in this book, for his fame as a physician rests mainly on work done during the last 25 years of his life. Medicine occupied Rush's mind and time only incidentally during the American Revolution. - Preface.

The only full biography of Benjamin Rush, an extraordinary Founding Father and America's leading physician of the Colonial era While Benjamin Rush appears often and meaningfully in biographies about John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, this legendary man is presented as little more than a historical footnote. Yet, he was a propelling force in what culminated in the Declaration of Independence, of which he was a signer. Rush was an early agitator for independence, a member of the First Continental Congress, and one of the leading surgeons of the Continental Army during the early phase of the Revolutionary War. He was a constant and indefatigable adviser to the foremost figures of the American Revolution, notably George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. Even if he had not played a major role in our country's creation, Rush would have left his mark in history as an eminent physician and a foremost social reformer in such areas as medical teaching, treatment of the mentally ill (he is considered the Father of American Psychiatry), international prevention of yellow fever, establishment of public schools, implementation of improved education for women, and much more. For readers of well-written biographies, Brodsky has illuminated the life of one of America's great and overlooked revolutionaries.

The success of the American Revolution is less likely to be understood through an examination of its ideological origins than through a close analysis of the political processes by which principles, beliefs, and anxieties were translated into revolutionary action. This book offers the first detailed profile of the several hundred obscure committeemen and propagandists who took up the new revolutionary ideology and carried it that one last step: out of the realm of rhetoric and into the domain of concrete change. And participatory democracy as a principle of American government owes its realization largely to these second-rank politicians and ordinary citizens, who provided the basic muscle of Revolutionary politics. In the 1760s and early 1770s Pennsylvania lacked nearly every ingredient for revolution found elsewhere in the colonies: a strong dissenting tradition, widely felt economic grievances, or a legislature intimately acquainted with royal government. Only the painstaking enlistment of a strong leadership core, the construction of new political institutions, and the rapid mobilization of the majority of the community could overcome these deficiencies. In Pennsylvania British authority succumbed to the activity of a few hundred men who were drawn into public life by a handful of veteran politicians within just two years. To these men and to their committees Pennsylvania owes its revolution. In his book Richard Alan Ryerson focuses on the daily business of politics in the Revolutionary period—the art of motivation for radical political purposes—and its economic and social dimensions in the most prominent American city of the time. How were the colonists mobilized for resistance? What was the political process? Who were the disaffected people who became the radical leaders of the Philadelphia community? To answer these questions, Ryerson compares campaigning styles, nomination and election procedures, and local political organizations in the colonial era with their counterparts during the Revolution. He also examines the age, economic status, religious faith, and national origins of the men who formed the radical committees of Philadelphia between 1765 and 1776.

A gripping, often startling biography of the Founding Father of an America that other Founding Fathers forgot--an America of women, African Americans, Jews, Roman Catholics, Quakers, indentured workers, the poor, the mentally ill, and war veterans Ninety percent of Americans could not vote and did not enjoy rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness when our Founding Fathers proclaimed, "all men are created equal." Alone among those who signed the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush heard the cries of those other, deprived Americans and stepped forth as the nation's first great humanitarian and social reformer. Remembered primarily as America's leading, most influential physician, Rush led the Founding Fathers in calling for abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, improved medical care for injured troops, free health care for the poor, slum clearance, citywide sanitation, an end to child labor, free universal public education, humane treatment and therapy for the mentally ill, prison reform, and an end to capital punishment. Using archival material from Edinburgh, London, Paris, and Philadelphia, as well as significant new materials from Rush's descendants and historical societies, Harlow Giles Unger's new biography restores Benjamin Rush to his rightful place in American history as the Founding Father of modern American medical care and psychiatry.

Benjamin Rush was a Founding Father of the United States. He lived in Pennsylvania and was a physician, writer, educator, humanitarian and devout Christian, as well as the founder of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Rush was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence and attended the Continental Congress. Later in life, he became a professor of medical theory and clinical practice at the University of Pennsylvania. Despite having a wide influence on the development of American government, he is not as widely known as many of his American contemporaries. Rush was also an early opponent of slavery and capital punishment. Despite his great contributions to early American society, Rush may be more famous today as the man who, in 1812, helped reconcile the friendship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams by encouraging the two former Presidents to resume writing to each other. The editor of the preface of this book gives an in-depth look into Benjamin Rush’s life. The writings of Rush, which are contained in this book, show a wide range of interest and knowledge embracing agriculture and the mechanical arts, chemistry and medicine, political science, and theology. Included are letters he wrote in an effort to dispel prejudice, to fight oppression, and to elevate the lot of the lowly.