Benjamin Rush

“BENJAMIN RUSH:
Universalist, Physician,
and Father of American Psychiatry!”[1]

INTRODUCTION: In 1813, Dr. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, died suddenly after a brief illness at age 67. On learning of his death, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams: "Another of our friends of seventy-six <1776, being when the Declaration of Independence was signed> is gone, my dear Sir, another of the co-signers of the Independence of our country. And a better man than Benjamin Rush could not have left us, more benevolent, more learned, of finer genius, or more honest."

John Adams wrote back, grief-stricken in reply, "I know of no Character living or dead, who has done more real good in America."

The official seal of the American Psychiatric Association bears Dr. Benjamin Rush's portrait. In fact, they placed a bronze plaque at his grave in Philadelphia in 1965, designating him the as the “Father of American Psychiatry.”

Rush, graduated from Princeton at age 15, and finished his medical education at Edinburgh in England. Among the many causes he championed were prison and judicial reform, abolition of slavery and the death penalty, education of women, conservation of natural resources, proper diet, abstaining from the use of tobacco and strong drink, and the appointment of a "Secretary of Peace" to the federal cabinet.

During his thirty years of service as a senior physician at the Pennsylvania Hospital, he substituted kindness and compassion, for cruelty towards the mentally ill; and in so doing, replacing reliance on archaic procedures with clinical observation and study. The year before he died, he published Medical Inquiries and Observations upon the Diseases of the Mind, the first textbook on psychiatry in America. In it, he undertook to classify different forms of mental illness and to theorize as to their causes and possible cures.

He was also a founding member of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons (known today as The Pennsylvania Prison Society). He led a successful campaign in 1792 for the state to build a separate mental ward where emotionally disturbed patients could be kept in more humane conditions.

He was also founder of the private liberal arts college, Dickinson College, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and was a founding trustee of Franklin College, which was America's first coeducational institution. Its first class of students included 78 men and 36 women. The women included the first Jewish female college student in the United States. (We sometimes forget that anti-Semitism has been part and parcel of American racism. Jacqueline Hubbard, former City Attorney of Ft. Myers, whom I mentioned last week, went to Bryn Mawr in the 1960s. It’s hard to believe now, but at that time, that illustrious and distinguished Quaker School, accepted only six African Americans and six Jews each year. More than 200 years ago, Franklin College in its initial class had 36 women, including a Jewish woman <though later they would unfortunately revise their policy>).

Rush founded the Philadelphia Dispensary for the Relief of the Poor, which gave free health care to the poor, the first medical clinic of its kind in the United States. He was elected to the Pennsylvania convention which adopted the U.S. constitution and was appointed treasurer of the U.S. Mint, serving from 1797-1813, the year he died. He published the first American textbook on chemistry, as well as several volumes on medical student education, and wrote a host of patriotic essays, which included consulting with Thomas Paine on his first essay, the widely influential Common Sense.

Rush pioneered the therapeutic approach to addiction. Prior to his advocacy, drunkenness was viewed as being sinful and a matter of choice. Rush developed the concept of alcoholism as a form of medical disease and proposed that alcoholics should be weaned from their addiction via less potent substances.

Rush is sometimes considered the father of therapeutic horticulture, particularly as it pertains to the institutionalized. In Diseases of the Mind, Rush wrote:

"It has been remarked, that the maniacs of the male sex in all hospitals, who assist in cutting wood, making fires, and digging in a garden, and the females who are employed in washing, ironing, and scrubbing floors, often recover, while persons, whose rank exempts them from performing such services, languish away their lives within the walls of the hospital."

He also helped Richard Allen with money, counsel and his public support in the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1792, the first Christian church for freed Blacks. He was an ardent abolitionist, who both spoke and wrote against slavery, and not only the slave trade, but the institution of slavery itself, arguing that Negroes were neither inferior intellectually nor morally. Rather, slavery "is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it."

The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, became after independence the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. It was led by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush. It did more than any other group to assist slaves seeking freedom.

In 1812 Rush was inspired by a dream to initiate an exchange of letters between Jefferson and Adams, who had become bitter enemies. The exchange, which Rush facilitated, quickly brought about reconciliation between those American giants, after a long period of mutual hostility and non-communication.

And one lighter look back on Rush’s part in the the Lewis & Clark expedition as they attempted to find a Northwest Passage to the Pacific: At the request of President Jefferson, Dr. Rush prepared medical kits for those on the expedition. In those kits, he gave Lewis pills with 50% mercury to ingest for a number of illnesses. These passed through the body, enabling archaeologists, years later, to identify campsites on the trail, where the high incidence of mercury left behind, confirmed that the explorers were once present.

Given that briefest of biographical resumes, it’s also interesting to note that Benjamin Rush was religiously active. In fact, he had some three or four theological incarnations. In the first, he was baptized and taught to be a Calvinist (the major exponent being Presbyterians). At that time, their preeminent doctrine was predestination. That was supported by the logic of classical theism, namely, if God knows everything, then, included in that knowing is that he knows what you and I are going to do next. God is all knowing.

That means, He (and they all thought of God as a male) knows whether we are going to go to heaven or to hell. And the particular American twist that the Puritans put on Calvinism was that prosperity was probably a sign of God’s blessing and that if you were rich, you were probably one of God’s elect…which explains in part why we Americans are so enamored still by the wealthy.

Rush had problems with that kind of thinking, and in a second theological incarnation appropriated another theology known as Arminianism, which informed Methodism. That basically meant that while God knows everything that’s going to happen, we are not predestined to the elect of God nor the damned; rather, we choose eternal damnation or blessing by our own will. Of course, there’s this big problem of all those who didn’t get to hear about these choices, so it’s necessary to send missionaries to convert them so that they don’t have to spend eternity in hell.

Rush then moved to a third theology, Universalism, where he believed that ultimately every human being in the Universe would be saved. Before that elevation to heaven occurred, however, there might well be an extended period in hell to do penance for your many sins; but eventually, everyone in the Universe – hence, where Universalists get their name – everyone eventually gets to Glory.

Finally, Rush also had a somewhat informed opinion about other religions, once remarking, “I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Muhammad inculcated upon our youth, than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles.”

In 1962, Universalism merged with the Unitarian Association and became the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. (Kind of catchy, isn’t it.) They tried to come up with a better name, but no luck. Universalism is no longer conceived of as a belief that everyone in the Universe will ultimately be saved. Rather, we’ve learned that our beliefs are really guesses about what is really real. Or more aptly, beliefs are a way to talk about what we perceive as reality but truly don’t know to be so.

That belief has become the practical creed of virtually every Christian denomination, despite their ministers,’ priests’ and bishops’ protestations to the contrary. I was reading a statement of Billy Graham’s that appeared in Newsweek Magazine some two or three years ago. Dr. Graham is now 90 years old and is for many the quintessential evangelical Christian in America. And in this interview by the Managing Editor of Newsweek, he was asked, whether those who belong to religions that reject Christ as savior (such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and secularism) will be “saved.”

Graham replied, "Those are decisions only the Lord will make. It would be foolish for me to speculate on who will be there [in heaven] and who won't. ... I don't want to speculate about that."

That doesn’t do away with the fact that some of us find it very difficult to imagine that our existence, which we are uniquely conscious of – that is, we know that, we know – will one day terminate with death. Nonetheless, Mother Nature has attempted to prepare us for that eventuality. Every year, we see the cycle of life – Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter – repeat itself: conception, birth, life and death. Every special holiday when families get together, it underscores that replacements have already arrived – sometimes more than one generational set.

As I attended Thanksgiving Dinner Thursday in Guthrie, Oklahoma with my sisters and their families, their kids were all there, with their little kids. And I remembered when my kids were the little ones, and I was one of the young parents. That’s Mother Nature’s way of saying, “Hey! Everything is under control. Don’t worry. There is someone ready to fill in the blanks.”

Benjamin Rush’s life is a testimony to the fact that change is possible, and to change, we may need to change one of the most potent systems in our body: the belief system. What we believe matters.

Now you may have heard that before, but remember: Just because we’ve heard it before doesn’t mean we’ve done it.

I’ve only had two experiences of death and near death. One was when I thought a lion was going to devour me while on a cot in a tent on the edge of the Ngora Ngora crater in Tanzania, Africa; and the other was when my heart stopped beating during a emergency procedure at Health Park hospital here in Ft. Myers.

The lion event was a prank by a television crew and cast; the other was reversed by good physicians and pads which shocked my heart back to beating. In the one, I was angry at the prospect of dying at age 29; in the other, I only knew about it later as I lay with tubes and instruments in every orifice. When my son and daughter appeared, one on either side, and told me they loved me, I was at peace regardless of what might happen.

I’ve realized since then that everything from thence forward is a gift. Life’s a journey made richer through the understanding of spiritual teachers of the past and present. Together, they say to us that life is good. Living is a gift. So live it to the fullest, with love for ourselves, our neighbor and God as we may or may not know her.

That is not necessarily a description of your life or of mine, but an affirmation of each of our lives and the endless options they pose. It’s an attitude in the way we live despite our circumstances.

[1] A sermon presented on post-Thanksgiving Sunday, November 30, 2008, as the fifth and last in a series entitled, “TRUE PATRIOTISM: Gifts of the Founding Fathers (IV), followed by the Conversation Café of All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, with the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.