The Art of Manliness - The Fascinating Life of America's Forgotten Founding Father

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast the 18th century

00:00:11.400 doctor civic leader and renaissance man benjamin rush was one of the youngest signers of the

00:00:15.580 declaration of independence edited and named thomas payne's common sense implemented medical

00:00:19.820 practices that helped the continental army win the revolutionary war made sure benjamin franklin

00:00:24.000 attended the constitutional convention and shaped the medical and political landscape of the newly

00:00:27.720 formed united states yet despite his outsized influence the varied interesting life he led and

00:00:32.360 the close relationships he had with other founding fathers like george washington thomas jefferson and

00:00:36.640 john adams rush is hardly remembered today that's because of just how close his relationship with

00:00:41.240 other founders was rush was a personal physician to them and their families and after his death

00:00:46.040 they suppressed his legacy not wanting the intimate and unflattering details he recorded in his letters

00:00:50.800 and journals to be publicized in fact his memoir was considered too dangerous to be published it

00:00:55.160 wasn't found for nearly 150 years my guest will reintroduce us to this forgotten figure his name

00:00:59.940 is steven freed and he's the author of rush revolution madness visionary doctor became a founding father

00:01:05.540 today on the show steven takes us through rush's fascinating life from his self-made rise out of an

00:01:09.800 inauspicious childhood to how he's able to reconcile and estranged jefferson and adams before his death

00:01:14.140 and what steven has learned from studying a character who lived through very fraught and not totally

00:01:18.440 unfamiliar times after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash rush

00:01:22.820 steven freed welcome to the show great thanks for having me so you have written a biography about a

00:01:41.900 founding father but it's not benjamin franklin it's not george washington not thomas jefferson or john

00:01:47.420 adams it's about a guy that i think a lot of people haven't heard of it's this doctor named

00:01:51.940 benjamin rush and rush was an interesting character because he was close to a lot of the founders in

00:01:57.240 fact he was the the personal physician for a lot of these guys uh he also kind of acted as the go

00:02:02.220 between with the founders when they had drama and spats between each other and when rush died a lot of

00:02:07.780 the other founding fathers tried to suppress his story because they didn't want anything that was

00:02:11.300 unflattering in the letters that they had written to each other to get out there in the public

00:02:14.760 so as a result of that a lot of people just overlook rush today which is unfortunate because

00:02:19.360 this guy had a big role in the american revolution and also in the field of medicine in early america

00:02:23.700 so let's dig into the life of benjamin rush we're going to introduce the world to rush it needs it

00:02:28.060 needs to be done okay so many of the founding fathers they were aristocrats landowners part of the

00:02:32.440 gentry some of them were self-made like benjamin franklin benjamin rush was also self-made

00:02:38.200 so tell us about his upbringing and rise in the world well you're right in separating the founders who

00:02:43.440 were self-made and the ones who came into wealth and rush was definitely somebody who was self-made

00:02:49.880 both in medicine and in politics so his family owned a farm outside of philadelphia his father

00:02:55.400 was a blacksmith he moved the family into town when benjamin rush was very young and then he died when

00:03:02.020 rush was five and so rush's mom was a working mom she opened a store on market street right down the

00:03:08.520 street from benjamin franklin's printing press and she supported the family she later married 0.87

00:03:14.060 not very well and so rush was brought up by her and he was a presbyterian which is not one of the

00:03:22.900 best religions to be in philadelphia at this time which was very quaker and and very church of england

00:03:28.320 later uh episcopal church so he was sent to a religious boarding school in maryland that was run by

00:03:35.500 his mother's cousin so his uncle and i maybe have that wrong it was definitely his uncle and so

00:03:41.560 because he was considered quite gifted he was really smart he was a great talker he had this really high

00:03:47.460 forehead even as a little kid that people sort of notioned that there was so much going on in his head

00:03:52.720 that it was like bursting out but he was just extremely smart made amazing connections had an incredible

00:03:58.620 memory and was just utterly fascinated by everything intellectual everything religious everything

00:04:05.860 scientific and so he went to this boarding school in maryland as did his younger brother many people

00:04:11.920 from philadelphia went to this boarding school he then was admitted at age 14 to what became princeton

00:04:17.700 then the college of new jersey as a junior graduated in the next year at age 16 and then decided to

00:04:25.620 apprentice as a physician and so he apprenticed to a physician in philadelphia john redmond

00:04:30.280 and this is at a time when there were no american medical schools so to get at a medical degree you

00:04:36.400 had to go overseas and so rush apprentice for several years he actually started taking classes in what

00:04:43.180 was what became the first medical school in america at the college of philadelphia which

00:04:47.900 benjamin franklin had started and his mentors there were recently trained doctors who were quite

00:04:54.200 brilliant but then also fought over which of them started the school which is the thing that rush got

00:04:59.020 caught in the middle of basically you know even among the doctors some of them were rich guys who

00:05:03.920 came from second and third generation doctors and some of them were people who would work their way up

00:05:08.440 and so rush was always considered somebody who was not born into money and never had a ton of money

00:05:14.680 but had amazing ideas his brain was just so fascinating and of course he became people's doctors

00:05:21.480 so he had this interesting relationship with them all through this time he's younger than the other

00:05:27.180 founders but he was like their young doctor who like gave them their first smallpox vaccination and

00:05:33.700 they would ask him medical questions part of the reason that adams and jefferson didn't want their

00:05:39.240 letters back and forth to rush become public is because they would often concern both political

00:05:44.800 religious issues and then really personal medical issues like you know i have really bad diarrhea what

00:05:50.500 should i do about that yeah talking about poop uh yeah even the founding fathers did it well

00:05:56.220 something that that really you really hit home and it's really impressed me about rush ever since he

00:06:00.680 was a child very curious this self-starter and something that he did that a lot of young upstarts did

00:06:07.620 back in you know 17th century 18th century is he had a commonplace book and the guy just wrote down

00:06:13.520 everything how did that mental habit shape him for the rest of his life he did you know what's

00:06:18.420 interesting i found you know when i had the same question you had and then i looked into it and i

00:06:22.720 saw that even then there's apparently a debate about how memory works of course we're still debating

00:06:27.520 that and the debate was do you take notes and that makes you remember or do you listen and not take

00:06:34.260 notes and that makes you remember most of rush's teachers thought you shouldn't take notes but rush took

00:06:39.980 notes and so what's wonderful is after a certain point we have them i mean a lot of things that rush

00:06:45.980 wrote are gone i'm still hoping they will bubble up somewhere but his commonplace books are wonderful

00:06:51.340 and part of the value of them is of course he did it when he was a kid he did it when he was a student

00:06:56.460 and then when he was in the continental congress he kept them about what it was like to be in the

00:07:01.060 continental congress he would write little sketches about what he thought about the people in the

00:07:05.280 continental congress no holds barred so he just he wrote a lot and so we have a lot of it we're missing a

00:07:13.060 lot of it but everything we have is what's really nice about it also is that he wasn't a formal writer

00:07:18.100 so he wrote in a style that we would today think of as almost like magazine writing and it's part of

00:07:23.280 the reason that he was such an accessible intellectual and such an accessible writer is because his writing

00:07:28.680 style and of course his penmanship were really readable and you when you read them today they seem

00:07:34.940 quite contemporary let's talk about these uh doctors that he they're medical school teachers

00:07:39.520 uh it was morgan and then the other guy was uh shipping yeah so so rush has a really interesting

00:07:46.080 young life so he decides to become a doctor and in 1865 he begins an apprenticeship with john redmond

00:07:52.540 who's very established doctor and then during the next couple years two young brilliant doctors come

00:07:58.360 home from edinburgh which is the top medical school in the world to set up their lives in philadelphia

00:08:04.360 one of them is john morgan and john morgan is like rush a guy who comes from relative poverty and

00:08:09.340 has worked his way up the other is william shipping jr whose doc whose father is already a big deal

00:08:14.420 doctor shipping comes back starts the first anatomy class ever taught in america which rush was one of

00:08:20.720 the first students in and was doing live dissections which was quite controversial and these were the

00:08:28.200 first classes like this in america and then morgan came back and actually asked the college if he could

00:08:33.960 start a medical school morgan and shipping had been friends shipping went nuts when morgan said he would

00:08:41.220 hire him for the medical school rather than name him as the co-founder and they never like spoke again

00:08:47.980 unless they had to and rush because he'd been mentored by both of them he had been morgan students too

00:08:54.120 was always stuck in the middle of them and morgan helped him a lot shipping went out of his way not

00:09:00.920 to help him and what's interesting is of course these doctors not only were benjamin rush's main

00:09:05.960 mentors in philadelphia they turned out to be the main doctors of george washington's army

00:09:11.060 and so rush ended up getting caught in the middle of their fight again during the war which caused 0.98

00:09:17.680 washington no end of disbelief that doctors could be so petty and stupid when something so important as 1.00

00:09:23.720 the revolutionary war was going on that they were fighting over just stupid stuff and so so rush learned 1.00

00:09:31.260 early on that people can be petty and jealous and competitive and that you had to deal with that 0.92

00:09:37.580 and so he was he became very smart about that but at the same time he was very opinionated and sometimes

00:09:43.980 he wouldn't stop even though he knew like how it would go down so another important figure from

00:09:49.560 philadelphia that had a big influence on rush's life is benjamin franklin so you said that he lived

00:09:54.400 down the street from benjamin franklin did they know each other as like did he know like he go over

00:09:58.820 ben's house be like hey uncle ben you know what i mean what was the nature of their relationship

00:10:03.260 no you know what's interesting one people forget that benjamin franklin was in europe during many of

00:10:09.020 the important periods in the american pre-revolutionary revolution so even though franklin franklin's wife and

00:10:15.560 family lived down the street from the rushes we have no evidence that they knew each other

00:10:19.300 in their early years what we know is that when rush went to medical school you know in his late

00:10:24.860 teens he was he and another doctor he went with wrote letters to franklin to introduce themselves

00:10:31.100 to him and let them know that they were fellow pennsylvanians who would come to england and come

00:10:35.060 to scotland for training and franklin wrote them some letters of introduction he was in london and he

00:10:42.220 so he introduced them to some of the enlightenment figures who were in edinburgh and that was wonderful for

00:10:48.200 rush and then after rush graduated from medical school he came to london he finally met franklin

00:10:54.560 what's really interesting is that rush kept a diary of his time edinburgh a diary of his time in london

00:11:00.540 and a diary of his time late in france which which is where franklin helped him go the london diary is

00:11:06.840 missing and no one knows why the other ones we have it could be because franklin you know he saw

00:11:13.800 something you know franklin was not considered sort of like the best husband um you know who knows what

00:11:19.660 was in those diaries but so we don't know a lot of details about what happened when the two bends met

00:11:25.400 but the it was a really important thing for benjamin rush benjamin franklin was a mentor of his his entire

00:11:31.820 life would send him letters from europe about scientific issues about medical issues about

00:11:36.700 political issues and then interestingly when franklin came home and was quite ill rush helped

00:11:44.940 take care of him and also made sure that he got his due i mean what's really interesting is that people

00:11:49.840 forget that the pennsylvania delegation to the constitution was not going to include franklin because

00:11:54.600 he was too sick and rush is the one who insisted it's like hey this guy is benjamin franklin

00:12:00.480 you are not going to not include him in the constitution of this country even if we have to

00:12:05.100 carry him on a litter over to the meetings which in fact is what they did so they had a really

00:12:11.600 interesting relationship it would be great if we knew more about it but a lot of things have been lost

00:12:15.820 but what's very clear is that rush saw himself as somebody who could continue franklin's work and keep

00:12:23.100 in mind that in philadelphia we have a different idea about franklin's work than the nation does in terms of

00:12:27.840 contributions to the declaration or to the constitution franklin was the inventor of these

00:12:32.980 sort of voluntary associations that would solve social problems that we that they didn't think the

00:12:39.800 government would solve so he created the first fire company he created the first library he created the

00:12:45.060 first hospital as things that people should create as donations because you didn't know the government

00:12:51.760 would ever do these things and so rush picked up his work after he was dying and died and tried to

00:12:59.240 continue this work because you know it's interesting we talk a lot about public health today you know

00:13:04.160 back then there was no public health you know the closest thing they had to public health were the

00:13:08.120 things that doctors volunteered to do pennsylvania hospital was free for poor people it was not a hospital

00:13:14.720 like we think of today doctors volunteered their time to take care of the indigent there that's what it was

00:13:20.060 that's what a hospital was people with money were treated at home even they when they had surgery

00:13:25.840 they had it at home so what rush was trying to do was continue the intellectual life that franklin had

00:13:33.540 created and i think just to a large degree he really did his role at the university of pennsylvania

00:13:38.700 during the period especially during the period when the capital was in philadelphia is really not

00:13:44.040 understood as well as it could be but when franklin died i mean there was a real need to make sure

00:13:49.180 that the ideas that he had about what it meant to be a citizen you know what it meant to be an american

00:13:54.640 what our responsibilities were to our fellow man especially to poor people and imprisoned people

00:14:00.400 you know rush thought about these things a lot and so their relationship that the artifacts we have

00:14:06.360 of it are amazing and fascinating and i continue to believe that there are more that we will find

00:14:11.160 because you know some things are still in private hands a lot of things about the revolutionary

00:14:15.680 period were bought by collectors a long time ago we still haven't seen them so i continue to hold

00:14:20.340 out hope okay so early on in rush's medical career like you said he loved to write and he started

00:14:25.420 writing pamphlets this was the equivalent of a blog right if you wanted to get the word out back in

00:14:30.840 revolutionary times instead of starting a blog you'd start publishing pamphlets and start selling them

00:14:35.320 i don't know if it's the same as a blog because it was a way of making money it was almost a way of

00:14:38.780 publishing personal how about a how about a sub stack it's more like a sub stack i paid yeah i mean it's

00:14:43.520 more like a zine remember zine yeah yeah yeah where you which you would make and you print them up

00:14:47.620 yourself and you'd sell them like an alternative bookstore right that's more like what pamphlets

00:14:51.560 yeah so he started putting these out but he's writing about health and he advocated for things

00:14:55.980 like he was kind of ahead of his time he was advocating for temperance like hey guys take it easy

00:14:59.780 on the hard liquor also said people should start exercising which was kind of weird for the 18th

00:15:04.980 century but then his health writings they started to get a little political i mean he still wasn't in the

00:15:11.080 public sphere as a as a as a politician but he did start getting political so how did his health

00:15:17.180 writing lead to revolutionary rhetoric well so the first big thing that he published was you're correct

00:15:24.080 it was a guide basically for wealthy people to take better care of themselves because he when he came

00:15:30.140 out of medical school his practice was very mixed what's cool about him is that his practice was mixed by

00:15:35.180 race by socioeconomic class and many people couldn't afford to pay so he was hoping to get some paying

00:15:40.320 customers so he put out a pamphlet which is really like the first self-help book and you're right it

00:15:45.820 talks about temperance although we always have to remember that back in rush's day temperance didn't

00:15:49.760 include wine and beer because wine was medicine and beer was not considered to be something dangerous

00:15:55.700 alcoholically so temperance was hard liquors it's one of the first places that talks about the people

00:16:01.480 exercising although you can always see rush always has like a political edge so he talks about the need for

00:16:06.820 people to exercise but then he can't resist making an abolitionist statement because he's totally against

00:16:13.180 slavery and he basically says well of course the reason you have to exercise is because all the things

00:16:19.040 you're supposed to be doing outdoors you know you enslave people to do so if you didn't do that you

00:16:24.860 wouldn't have to like learn how to exercise so part of the thing is that rush always had those kinds of

00:16:29.500 comments which he would give a whole speech and then at the end he would make a comment having to do with

00:16:34.920 abolition and how bad slavery is he'd make a comment about independence and just create a hot button

00:16:41.020 issue when he wasn't originally talking about something else that was just rush so the leading

00:16:45.620 abolitionist of the day anthony benezet read rush's thing and realized that rush could write on abolition

00:16:51.980 issues so he encouraged rush to write a pamphlet on abolition and this is it came out in 1773 it's so

00:16:59.280 early and it's certainly the earliest of any of the writings of the founders on these issues and so he

00:17:03.740 wrote this pamphlet the self-help for rich people he wrote a pamphlet on abolition and that actually

00:17:09.800 led to him being asked to be one of the ghost writers for the proclamation that led to the

00:17:15.280 boston tea party so like every city was going to have a tea party boston just happened to do theirs first

00:17:20.320 so the proclamation about why tea shouldn't be able to come into the country the philadelphia group that

00:17:26.360 wrote their proclamation everybody liked that one best so that one was in the boston newspapers which led to

00:17:32.440 the boston tea party in philadelphia they stopped the boat with the tea before it came to philadelphia

00:17:37.400 and so these were the kinds of things he was known as somebody who could be a really good writer

00:17:42.220 he was also really fast writer and so people saw initially that he was smart that he was had a lot

00:17:48.280 of interesting ideas and that he could write things that the public would understand and i think a lot of

00:17:54.040 what he did was trying to explain ideas to people as best he could and he was responsible that in a lot

00:18:01.120 of different ways i mean many people don't know for example that he is the one who encouraged thomas

00:18:05.380 payne to write what became common sense because he believed that somebody needed to explain the idea

00:18:11.720 of independence especially to people in philadelphia who were not so into it because philadelphia was the

00:18:16.900 most powerful city in the country at that point they had the most to lose by changing the world they

00:18:21.620 lived in so rush didn't write it himself he'd started a pamphlet but he had gotten so much in so much

00:18:27.580 trouble because of his abolition pamphlet he lost a lot of his customers because they found out he

00:18:31.720 wrote the abolition pamphlet that he instead encouraged payne to write this pamphlet on independence

00:18:36.420 the goal of which was to explain why independence was a good important thing and not something to be

00:18:43.280 scared of and the process in 1775 of rush and payne that fall you know rush edited these pages as payne wrote

00:18:51.800 them and then um he was the one who found the publisher for it and he actually named it so their

00:18:58.100 relationship i wish there was we knew more about it we know about it mostly because rush talked about

00:19:02.540 it later because at the time it was a big hit mystery who wrote common sense you know because

00:19:07.020 of course the british would come and kill them so but it's it's really fascinating his ideas about

00:19:12.580 explaining complicated ideas to the public and then later after the revolution he's trying to wrestle with

00:19:19.460 the idea of what is an american citizen what are the responsibilities of a person in this country

00:19:25.340 we just created i mean we're still debating this like every day what's interesting is that rush lays

00:19:30.700 out a lot of the basic challenges because they're hardwired in the country they're not about the

00:19:36.080 internet they're not about you know any pat any recent president they're about america and rush identified

00:19:43.400 that immediately and that's why his writing on this is really you know it's timeless yeah i thought

00:19:48.900 that was interesting this part of his life where it's going up the revolution it's like the early

00:19:53.080 1770s he's a great writer he he has opinions that he wants to share but at the same time he struggles

00:19:59.380 with okay i got a growing medical career here i i have to kind of figure out how to balance my ideals

00:20:06.400 with sort of the day-to-day i got to pay the bills exactly he is not rich and he every time he does

00:20:12.800 something political he knows there will be consequences yeah so he kind of as you say he kind of played

00:20:17.560 behind the scenes he ghost wrote some things he encouraged thomas paine to to write common sense

00:20:22.860 so he sticks to the margins when it comes to political life but then somehow he ends up being

00:20:29.720 one of the signers of the declaration of independence so how did how did that happen how did he go from

00:20:34.320 behind the scenes guy to i'm putting my my life on the line well he he started being more on the

00:20:40.720 scenes in 1775 and 1776 he got married in early 1776 to julius stockton whose father richard stockton

00:20:49.280 was what sort of the most powerful lawyer in new jersey and whose family had given the land for

00:20:54.400 princeton who also became a signer and so he started getting more involved in 1776 and he was asked to

00:21:02.360 write the you know not only was thomas jefferson writing a national supposedly national declaration of

00:21:08.780 independence that everybody would sign on to but each state each you know uh colony had to write

00:21:15.280 their own declaration of independence so rush was actually the leader of the writing group for the

00:21:21.580 pennsylvania declaration of independence so he was involved at that point and then rush had been

00:21:26.800 involved the only politics he'd been involved in were the state constitution and keep in mind there was

00:21:31.360 no federal constitution so the state constitutions really mattered so he starts getting more involved

00:21:37.000 and then you know what happens is you know he's close with this group of people who are the

00:21:43.060 delegation from pennsylvania and one of the most outspoken members of the delegation is is john

00:21:47.960 dickinson who's very well-known lawyer older than rush rush has known him for a long time

00:21:51.840 rush's brother worked in his law firm and dickinson felt very strongly that the declaration of

00:21:58.500 independence was coming too soon so he wouldn't sign it because he thought it was too soon to declare

00:22:03.940 independence and in a very well-documented and dramatic series of events he leaves the continental

00:22:10.600 congress in july in late june early july of 1776 and rush is immediately elected to take his place

00:22:19.340 and sign so out of nowhere benjamin rush who's certainly well known to all these people

00:22:26.560 jefferson comes over to his house adams comes over to his house washington comes over to his house to

00:22:31.840 eat they hang out at the city tavern you know he's like their doctor and their philadelphia friend

00:22:37.340 during these continental congresses but all of a sudden he's one of them and he signed the

00:22:43.120 declaration and we have in his commonplace book exactly what it was like he wrote about what the

00:22:48.080 debates were like which is some of the best descriptions we have of the debates of the

00:22:51.980 continental congress during 1776 and he quickly makes a name for himself there but he also quickly

00:22:59.000 feels that he wants to be helping on the battlefield because as you know the war is starting to come

00:23:04.580 closer to pennsylvania so you know they got their butts kicked in new york the british are sort of coming

00:23:10.040 down through new jersey and rush wants to be there so in the fall late fall of 1776 he leaves the

00:23:18.720 congress so that he can go treat patients on the battlefield and help as a doctor so and the great

00:23:25.620 value of this for us narratively is that he's with washington at the banks of the delaware the night

00:23:31.320 before washington crosses the delaware and our descriptions of what washington was thinking that night

00:23:37.120 these really famous images of washington writing victory or death on little pieces of paper these all

00:23:43.060 come from russia's commonplace books and from and from letters that he wrote because he was with

00:23:47.680 washington washington sent orders with him back to the different groups you know there were four groups

00:23:53.480 along the delaware they were different state militias so rush went from washington's group back

00:23:57.820 to the pennsylvania militia with orders that washington gave him and through rush's writing and through

00:24:03.640 looking at all the details of this you could actually recreate what it was like not only for

00:24:08.080 washington's crossing but for the other groups crossing and that you know that's what i really tried to do

00:24:13.560 it tried to make even the crossing of the delaware something more of like what was it like for

00:24:17.900 everybody because you know the crossing the delaware delaware's not that wide but it was frozen so there

00:24:23.700 was a lot of big ice flows and of course they were taking things they were floating horses across the

00:24:28.040 delaware and they were floating cannons across the delaware like on barges and rafts so this is none of

00:24:33.640 this is easy but we have great descriptions of it and rush crosses he's with the troops he goes to

00:24:39.300 trenton he takes care of troops that were treated at the battle of trenton then he goes to princeton

00:24:44.260 where he went to college and the battle of princeton is on and just ending and he is caring for patients

00:24:50.240 on the main grounds of princeton where he went to school and the british had been in in the chapel

00:24:56.800 where he had taken lots of his classes so it's incredibly powerful and and also at the same time his

00:25:02.540 father-in-law richard stockton was kidnapped by the british so he also was waiting to see if his

00:25:09.860 father-in-law was dead so it's very dramatic and rush just gives you it's like everything you already

00:25:15.840 knew about this stuff plus the way i think of it is like rush had another camera running in many of the

00:25:21.880 events of the revolutionary war and like no one realized the film didn't get developed for hundreds

00:25:26.140 of years so rush is always giving you just sort of a different perspective on this but he's

00:25:31.380 he's getting more and more involved in the war and he's also ultimately less and less involved in

00:25:36.780 pennsylvania politics so he gets voted out of office after all these experiences in war and then he's

00:25:42.380 immediately made surgeon general of the middle department which is the biggest department in the

00:25:46.840 war in the spring of 1777 the problem being he's perfect for this job but his boss is william

00:25:54.140 ship and jr his old mentor tour mentor from philadelphia who hates his guts and so in fact they

00:26:02.060 are fighting about everything all the time one of the things that rush does at this time to make sure

00:26:06.560 that his ideas get out there is he writes a very powerful medical treatise about taking care of soldiers

00:26:13.620 during war which became the first important piece of writing about medical about war medicine and what

00:26:20.900 was really interesting about it is it's not so much about what you do on the battlefield it's about

00:26:25.380 preventive medicine because rush believed very much that they didn't have anywhere near the kind

00:26:30.000 of treatments that they needed and you know many of the injuries that they had where people's arms

00:26:33.880 are being blown off i mean all they could do is amputate but what he believed was that hospitals

00:26:38.860 were dangerous places full of infection and that what was really important was for to do preventive 0.93

00:26:44.920 medicine with soldiers really simple things i mean this seems so stupid now but you know 0.57

00:26:49.560 soldiers weren't told to go to the bathroom far away from their tents so people got you know

00:26:55.180 dysentery and other infections because of stuff like that rush had to tell them to do that he also

00:27:00.220 popularized the the crew cut you know the army crew cut in america by explaining how keeping your hair

00:27:06.260 short would be healthier and so this was the thing that he wrote he actually published it in the

00:27:11.120 newspaper and then george washington later had it printed and given to all the soldiers we're going to

00:27:16.240 take a quick break for a word from our sponsors

00:27:19.560 and now back to the show yeah rush early on he recognized that most people in war most soldiers

00:27:25.640 in war died because of disease not because they got exactly and so he yeah he played a big role i mean

00:27:31.620 he like people like whenever you think about war you always think about the guns and the cannons

00:27:36.060 but the medicine like if you if you have six soldiers like you're not gonna you're not gonna win

00:27:41.260 and so he i mean like he played a big role in helping the americans win the war

00:27:45.380 he did and but he and he also got thrown out one because he and ship and fought about everything

00:27:51.120 but two he was obsessively concerned that the government wasn't spending enough money

00:27:56.440 taking care of soldiers and with preventive medicine and then actual hospital medicine

00:28:01.340 and what's ironic is you know one of the biggest turning points in russia's life so he

00:28:05.660 you know 1777 he becomes surgeon general the middle department he lives through a terrible battle

00:28:11.620 of brandy wine america loses every war in the the summer and fall of that year 1777 he's there all

00:28:17.040 of them just watching just horror and then he wants washington to pay more attention to this and to give

00:28:24.720 more money for medical care and so he writes to washington and russia doesn't write back fast enough

00:28:30.360 they're separated because the capital moved and rush is separated from his wife because she's

00:28:35.960 somewhere safe adams is gone and rush could be pretty manic if he wasn't calmed down he's a pretty

00:28:42.160 kind of bipolar guy and he always needed people to reality check him and he there was no reality check

00:28:47.600 on him and so he was so upset that washington wouldn't write back to him and he was hearing from

00:28:54.220 the generals that washington had made some questionable choices and of course they were losing every fight

00:28:59.400 he wrote a very famous letter to patrick henry anonymously basically questioning whether

00:29:06.320 washington's choices were good and whether he was the right guy to go forward with and this was

00:29:12.500 pretty blasphemous for the time he wrote a similar letter to john adams which didn't make any big deal

00:29:18.640 because it just went to john adams we actually discovered a third letter that he wrote to his wife

00:29:23.160 that that is in a library in philadelphia but he clearly was kind of losing it because he felt that he

00:29:29.140 didn't have he wasn't impacting washington's decision making and in fact it just turned out

00:29:34.040 that washington was busy and didn't get back to him because in the time that the rush wrote these

00:29:38.660 letters saying we need more money for medicine and then he freaked out and wrote this letter to patrick

00:29:43.360 henry questioning whether washington was the right guy washington wrote back to him and said he agreed

00:29:48.240 with him and that they would do these kinds of things but it was too late and later patrick henry

00:29:54.940 shared that letter with george washington and george washington never forgave rush for writing

00:30:00.180 that letter because washington had heard all these complaints i mean it was a very complainy time

00:30:05.480 this is you know leading up to valley ford just a tough time in the war but for washington to see

00:30:10.960 in handwriting of somebody who was his friend and rush was his friend at that point and was a former

00:30:16.200 congressman somebody who mattered that he had questioned whether washington was making the right

00:30:20.900 choices washington never forgave him for that and their relationship went from friendly to frenemy

00:30:27.540 and everybody knew it and over the years some people tried to repair the relationship but it was

00:30:32.560 not to be repaired and when washington died he made sure that that letter got into the hands of his

00:30:38.060 biographer so people would know that rush wrote this letter questioning him at the darkest moment and

00:30:44.980 and this impacted rush's life all through the rest of his life because people knew that he and

00:30:48.820 washington were no longer friends all right so after the war rush decides to take a break from

00:30:53.900 political life it was like you said he's kind of manic he's probably not suited his personality is not

00:30:58.180 suited for public life so what did he do instead what did he do with his career well he went back to

00:31:03.700 being a doctor i mean as soon as the british left philadelphia he went home and he tried to build up

00:31:09.720 his practice again he tried to build up also some hospital work and a lot of that had to wait until

00:31:15.560 the war was actually over but then you know when the war was over he became very active he wanted

00:31:20.740 to become not only a powerful doctor but a writer who would help shape the post-war period because his

00:31:28.360 belief was that winning the war was an unbelievable accomplishment but figuring out how to do what to

00:31:33.840 do with this new country was much harder and he wanted to be part of that discussion so he basically

00:31:41.040 wrote things saying like the war's over but it really isn't over because the revolution is just

00:31:45.140 starting and one of the things he wanted to focus on was education so he felt that that if the populist

00:31:52.260 wasn't educated there would be no way they would understand their responsibilities as citizens so he

00:31:57.160 he starts the first rural college in america dickinson college in carlisle he starts that himself

00:32:03.600 he writes out a plan for the first public school systems to be put in place in pennsylvania but is

00:32:09.720 influential all over the country he starts a second college called franklin college which is now

00:32:15.440 franklin and marshall and then he starts writing all these different things that really deal with

00:32:21.040 important issues that he hopes will influence the process of writing the constitution and figuring out

00:32:28.240 how to govern because you know the country is really mushy in terms of what to do after the war so we

00:32:34.640 tend to forget like the period from 1781 until the constitution is signed to us that's just like

00:32:39.920 whatever but that's you know that's like a really dangerous time anything could have happened and so

00:32:45.180 it's very interesting to see what rush did to try to make people think about these big ideas and by the

00:32:50.800 end of that period he he was not on the constitution convention he was there and he he was the leader of

00:32:57.100 the pennsylvania delegation to approve it but he very much had a hand in a lot of these debates

00:33:02.220 and by the time that was all done he had become the most important doctor in america so john morgan who

00:33:09.440 had who had become was the most important doctor died in 1789 rush took over for him and then the

00:33:15.660 the colleges that were in pennsylvania consolidated into the university of pennsylvania and then you have

00:33:22.560 this whole period you know when when philadelphia becomes the capital those 10 years are unbelievably

00:33:27.800 formative for america and obviously unbelievably formative for philadelphia and rush is like

00:33:32.720 the god the medical god of philadelphia the political advisor to everybody he's close friends

00:33:38.940 with adams and jefferson which may not mean anything to us today but that was like being close friends to

00:33:44.500 the top republican and the top democrat and he was he both of them confided in him and he was sort of

00:33:50.380 caught in the middle of them a lot and so his time during that is fascinating and he matters in a huge

00:33:56.980 way to all the players and both in terms of medicine in terms of politics and also just in terms of

00:34:03.660 it's his city you know it's like he's also like the editor of philadelphia magazine so he knows where

00:34:08.800 all the good restaurants are and you know all that kind of stuff so you know abigail adams says like it's

00:34:13.140 such so great to have you know benjamin rush as your friend when you have to live in philadelphia he kind

00:34:17.380 of knows everything and everybody so his his life becomes real different and real fascinating and

00:34:24.700 it's so well documented during this time the letters between him and adams it's well documented

00:34:30.520 until adams comes to town i'll tell you one of the things that kills you as a historian when the

00:34:34.720 characters you love are all in the same town the letters disappear you know so there's all this

00:34:40.400 amazing all these amazing letters between adams and jefferson adams and rush and while adams is

00:34:45.520 overseas and then when adams is in new york during the brief time in the capitals in new york and then

00:34:50.040 as soon as he gets to philadelphia there's like a quiet time and then after he leaves and after the

00:34:55.500 capitol leaves and moves to washington there's tons of letters okay so uh rush after the war he he picks

00:35:01.260 up franklin's mantle of creating voluntary you know toque velian voluntary associations to help this new

00:35:08.900 country develop he called them republican machines right so these individuals well no he called he said the

00:35:13.840 individual people needed to be republican machines right he was talking about that as the personal

00:35:18.500 responsibility of each person to be a machine to fulfill its responsibilities to the new republic right

00:35:25.100 so he's doing that but at the same time he's also building up his medical career but he takes

00:35:29.500 a really keen interest in mental illness um and this was revolutionary for the time a lot of people

00:35:35.960 didn't know what to what to think of mentally ill people but he he's thought that we could cure mentally

00:35:41.720 ill people with with medicine what what was going on there well so basically you know this is a time

00:35:48.120 when medicine is starting to become a little bit more scientific and you know when it comes to mental

00:35:52.700 illness and addiction mental illness and addiction were for many centuries seen as either human weaknesses

00:35:59.220 or failures of faith and you know rush as a doctor knew that neither of those were true and that

00:36:06.760 alcoholism that mental illness depression mania these were medical conditions he assumed that the

00:36:13.700 only way they could be treated if they could be treated was by medicine and it was very important for him

00:36:19.500 to make people understand that we needed to treat the people whose brains were different than ours 0.99

00:36:25.180 in a gracious way in a caring way in a medical way and you know because people with mental illness and

00:36:32.200 alcoholism at that time were locked in the basement of pennsylvania hospital they weren't treated they

00:36:36.800 were just like jailed you know to keep them from hurting other people and people were allowed to come

00:36:42.580 and pay to look at them right you see these images in movies all the time it's horrible they also

00:36:48.140 weren't heated these cells because the belief at the time was that people with mental illness couldn't

00:36:52.660 feel cold so in the 1780s rush took this on he knew it would be hard but at the same time he also

00:36:59.540 provided a place to take care of people so as i said to you you know pennsylvania hospital was for

00:37:04.460 poor people except for the part of it that was for people with mental illness because those people 0.87

00:37:09.080 couldn't be taken care of at home so rush was treating both people who lived on the street who

00:37:15.220 were brought into the hospital and he treated some of the children of the founding fathers he

00:37:19.580 eventually in the 1790s forced them to build a second building only for people who had mental illness

00:37:25.700 and addiction and so the pennsylvania hospital which is still there you can still tour it but you know

00:37:30.700 the original eighth street building had cells in the basement he forced them to build a mirror building

00:37:35.240 on ninth street only for people with mental illness and addiction and he began writing down what happened

00:37:40.820 there you know the beginnings of talk therapy the beginnings of occupational therapy all happened

00:37:46.200 there and the irony the utter irony of this is he does this for decades and then his eldest son who's a

00:37:52.880 physician who's interested in this things too his master's thesis was about suicidality

00:37:58.440 becomes mentally ill has a huge psychotic break tries to kill himself many times and ends up being 0.77

00:38:05.460 rush's patient so this is the doctor who rush expected to take over his practice instead he had a psychotic

00:38:11.680 break in his last late 20s after killing his best friend in a duel and he ended up being rush's patient

00:38:19.740 and he lived the rest of his life at pennsylvania hospital in the new mental illness wards that rush

00:38:26.820 had created so the behind the scenes stories you know just as they are today people don't talk enough

00:38:32.700 about how alcohol how other addictions how mental illness affects life but it certainly does you know

00:38:39.660 the biggest thing that happened in john adams his life was that his son died of alcoholism it's not

00:38:44.280 something that people talk about a lot but i guarantee you that that's was a huge thing that hung over john

00:38:49.020 adams so you know people were never afraid to talk to rush about these things because they knew

00:38:53.440 he understood and that he believed there was a medical approach even though look as then as today

00:38:59.540 it's really hard to treat people with mental illness there's no silver bullet there's no easy way to make

00:39:04.120 it all go away so uh in 1793 there was a yellow fever epidemic in philadelphia yes and yellow yellow fever

00:39:12.980 is awful like you you get it and you kind of have a headache and then maybe some nausea but when it gets

00:39:17.400 bad your skin starts turning yellow you get jaundiced you start vomiting blood it was awful

00:39:23.060 they didn't know what what spread it it's mosquitoes right that's what spreads yellow fever yeah but it 1.00

00:39:27.600 was a hundred years after that before they learned that so so rush you know most most of everyone in

00:39:32.480 philadelphia they left they got out of town it's like we're gonna get out of this out of philadelphia

00:39:36.740 rush he stays there and he's just treating patients and despite the fact that he could be you know come

00:39:42.580 down with yellow fever at any moment what was his role in the yellow fever epidemic

00:39:47.400 so the yellow fever look there had been yellow fever before but there never been an epidemic like

00:39:52.380 the one in philadelphia in 1793 and again remember philadelphia was the u.s capital at that time so

00:39:57.760 the people who were fleeing were like george washington and people like that so ironically the

00:40:03.440 yellow fever epidemic came right on the heels of rush had been working with the black clergy in 1.00

00:40:07.820 philadelphia to build the first free black church and they just had this dinner to celebrate the roof

00:40:13.420 raising of the first free black church which was fascinating because all the white people who helped

00:40:18.600 with it they were served by the black members of the community and by the clergy and then they got up 0.99

00:40:23.840 and served the black members of the community it's such an amazing scene that rush actually writes about

00:40:29.980 to his wife and it would have been so great for people to be able to hold on to that wonderful feeling

00:40:35.500 but yellow fever came immediately afterwards and yellow fever was both a medical challenge and a

00:40:41.740 racial challenge sadly because what happened was the black clergy who rush was close with volunteered to 0.55

00:40:48.220 help when all the doctors left they did it i think primarily because it was the right thing to do

00:40:54.560 the medical literature actually said that they were less likely to get the illness but i honestly i don't

00:40:59.300 think they cared about that they cared about helping and it turned out within weeks they knew that the

00:41:03.960 medical literature was wrong and everybody got it the same but you know 10 of the population of

00:41:08.980 philadelphia died in three months and philadelphia was the biggest city in the country at that point

00:41:13.660 every treatment that people gave didn't work and what we know from going through covid is that when 0.66

00:41:21.340 smart doctors and dumb doctors don't know what to do and nothing works they just take off after each other 0.61

00:41:27.860 and then that leaves us all the sick people just even more freaked out and that's exactly what 0.99

00:41:33.460 happened here and it got political you know alexander hamilton announced that he had been cured of the

00:41:40.320 yellow fever by his doctor who didn't like rush so he published his thing his treatment which rush knew

00:41:46.780 didn't work and then rush went after him it's it's all politicized it's all a mess it's actually

00:41:53.020 extremely well documented we have all of rush's letters that he wrote almost every day we have rush's

00:41:58.420 letters from his wife back to him she's in princeton with their kids scared to death that she's never going to

00:42:03.280 see her husband again their friends are dropping like flies every day every treatment they do doesn't

00:42:09.120 work so rush keeps increasing he does more bloodletting he doubles the bloodletting he doubles the calomel he

00:42:15.800 doubles the bark which are all the things that you treat people during this night nothing works

00:42:19.940 rush got yellow fever himself as did richard allen one of the two pastors who was involved in the care

00:42:25.900 luckily they both lived many of rush's staff died rush's sister who stayed in town to take care of him

00:42:31.880 she died of it and it's just it's unbelievably horrible and it's unbelievably knowable because

00:42:39.180 we have all this all the writings of it so you can know what happened during those those days

00:42:44.000 at a very close level so there's a there's a lot to read about the yellow fever epidemic and i i do fear

00:42:50.620 that people have strong opinions about it without knowing that much about it the more you go into its

00:42:56.120 history the more you learn not only about medicine but just about american politics because this is also

00:43:01.720 the birthplace of american partisanship you know a lot of american partisanship was created

00:43:07.760 by alexander hamilton in 1791 234 this is when the parties split this is when there came to be a

00:43:16.480 republican and democratic version of everything and you know it's probably a natural process but this is

00:43:23.420 when it happened and yellow fever contributed to that too so i would only urge people when they read about

00:43:29.080 this and i i hope you do read about it to see it as a as a medical phenomenon and see it as a political

00:43:35.000 and an american phenomenon because we are replaying a lot of these things today yeah i thought it was

00:43:40.460 funny hamilton you know he wrote that thing about his his cure they called it the federalist cure it was

00:43:45.140 the federalist cure yeah and but like some people thought it was a little too weenie right it wasn't

00:43:48.760 enough it was like it's kind of wussy and so you need to do it was nothing right it was nothing the

00:43:52.900 treatment was like let them sit there and give them water right and then there's like the democratic

00:43:56.380 republican cure where it's a little you had to be a little more aggressive with this thing um

00:44:00.320 yeah i mean it's as i read this it's like this is just this is a deja vu like this more things

00:44:06.260 change the more they stay the same yep yeah america you know the thing that's fascinating and i never

00:44:11.340 realized it until i did this book america was america the minute it began and everything we think

00:44:17.960 that came because of oh this technology or this world war this kind of stuff it's just all

00:44:23.240 incrementalism from the beginning i find that actually comforting yeah i do too because i because

00:44:29.440 i think in every era there are people who think oh we broke this thing you know it was really good

00:44:34.260 until we broke it by doing this or doing that but in fact the fissures were there from the very

00:44:40.340 beginning and they are part of the country and they're okay but you have to as long as you look

00:44:47.220 at the founders and you don't see the founders as people who didn't think that if you look at the

00:44:51.080 founders and think that they didn't think that you are not reading the founders closely enough

00:44:55.040 all right so after the yellow fever epidemic rush survived he spent the rest of his life

00:45:00.520 still doing some doctor work but then he's devoted a lot of time to reconnecting john adams and thomas

00:45:06.500 jefferson because they became estranged why did rush think that was important to do well you know first

00:45:12.620 of all you know rush in a way never recovered from the yellow fever epidemic it became a thing that hung

00:45:17.920 over him for years it really hurt his business it hurt his popularity john adams had to give him a

00:45:24.040 job at the u.s mint so he could have money because his practice was so hurt by the politics of yellow fever

00:45:31.020 so it was really rough and then of course the u.s capital left philadelphia which rush was crushed by

00:45:36.460 it went to washington so when adams lost to jefferson in the 18 the election of 1800 which was unbelievably

00:45:43.920 contentious unbelievably contentious the two of them didn't speak for years and adams left washington

00:45:50.620 in a huff went back home was unbelievably depressed russian jefferson stayed in some contact but

00:45:57.060 russian adams were out of contact for five years and these are guys who used to talk every day and

00:46:03.260 when they were apart they would write to each other all the time and then after five years adams sends

00:46:09.500 rush a letter and he just says like you know before one of us dies we should talk again and this letter

00:46:16.680 triggers this unbelievable flurry of events which are a lot of the reason we really understand the

00:46:23.160 american revolution and here's why so when this letter was sent in 1905 adams and jefferson had not

00:46:29.320 spoken in five years and you can argue that adams jefferson created this country you know the

00:46:34.840 intellectual the basis of this country adams and jefferson created it rush certainly felt that he

00:46:40.740 felt that the dissolution of their friendship was an unbelievably dangerous thing for america

00:46:45.920 that if adams and jefferson could be torn apart by partisanship what did that mean for the rest of

00:46:51.400 the country if the guys who invented the intellectual underpinnings of the country couldn't talk to each

00:46:56.740 other even after all this stuff so he was fascinated to be back in touch with adams his letters back and

00:47:03.700 forth to adams are very much sort of treatment for adams's depression but they're also just an amazing

00:47:09.420 back and forth between two founders talking later in their lives about was it all worth it and what

00:47:14.560 did we do and what should happen next you know and a lot of what we understand about the american

00:47:18.880 revolution doesn't come from the real-time writing when it was happening it comes from these later

00:47:23.320 letters which are unbelievably detailed and fascinating so these go on for a number of years and part of what

00:47:29.200 rush starts seeing is that he understands the part of what this letter writing can be is that he maybe

00:47:34.680 can get adams and jefferson back together so you see in these letters to adams the beginnings of this

00:47:40.800 sort of again it's founding father family therapy it's like what do i have to do to get adams to think

00:47:45.920 about that he and jefferson should be friends again and he starts doing it with jefferson too and we have

00:47:51.320 all these letters so you know he also during this time jefferson makes him the medical person for

00:47:57.340 lewis and clark so lewis comes to philadelphia rush tells him what to do before lewis and clark goes

00:48:02.280 out so rush and jefferson are back and forth but he gets it in his head that these letters can be the

00:48:08.420 reason that adams and jefferson get back together and for years then he starts sort of saying to them

00:48:13.640 like you guys could still be friends you know don't you miss each other you know it's some of it's real

00:48:19.080 high school stuff you know he's like you know i heard from a friend in boston that adams says he still

00:48:23.460 loves you i mean i'm serious this is like what some of the stuff is the letters are so unbelievably

00:48:28.000 personal they're great you can understand why adams jefferson didn't want anybody to see them

00:48:31.880 and finally in 1812 so again so these adams jefferson haven't talked in 12 years and rush

00:48:37.860 has been on adams for seven years to interact with jefferson and they finally write to each other

00:48:44.800 and they finally rekindle their friendship only because of rush and you know this is fascinating

00:48:51.260 because you know rush is much younger than them and rush is doing this because he's afraid one of

00:48:55.420 them will die before their relationship is rekindled and rush only lives another year

00:49:01.040 and they live another 13 years right so they end up dying you know in 1826 and we then have

00:49:10.180 letters between them from 1812 through 1826 that are remarkably in-depth that go over many aspects of

00:49:17.220 the american revolution that we otherwise wouldn't know because rush started this letter writing thing

00:49:22.380 and after rush died rush's son richard who was in the government was in the letter writing too as was

00:49:27.760 of course john quincy adams adams's son because you know rush's son and adams's son are the only

00:49:34.060 founding father's sons who mattered in the u.s government so john quincy adams obviously became

00:49:39.740 president richard rush was attorney general he was secretary of state he was john quincy adams's

00:49:45.560 vice presidential candidate the last time john quincy adams ran and lost but they were they were

00:49:51.660 lifelong friends so the interactions between rush adams and jefferson while they're all alive and

00:49:58.060 then after rush dies between adams and jefferson john quincy and richard rush are the basis of a lot

00:50:05.400 of our understanding of how the founders look back on the american revolution and the retelling

00:50:11.060 of some of the stories that some of them we didn't know before some of them just there's a different

00:50:15.860 version of them in these letters they're so interesting and they're so human and they're

00:50:21.080 ultimately just two friends and again these guys never saw each other right adams and rush never saw

00:50:27.000 each other after the capital left in 1800 and jefferson and adams never saw each other either this was a

00:50:32.640 friendship completely through letters over decades and it is the basis of so much of our understanding of

00:50:40.440 the american revolution it's amazing so after researching and studying and writing about

00:50:45.060 rush's life and you know spending so much time with him are there any lessons you've taken from him

00:50:49.740 a lot oh a lot i mean first of all you know i never understood how fascinating and personal the

00:50:56.460 american revolution was and how close it was to not happening right i just i just don't think that

00:51:02.260 anybody ever tried to explain to me the real human drama of the period leading up to the war and the war

00:51:08.440 itself and the period after the war and the writing of the constitution and just the creation of a

00:51:12.880 government and the movement of the government up through the war of 1812 and with rush you get

00:51:17.780 basically you know everything he died in 1813 so you get up through the war of 1812 his son is in

00:51:23.540 washington during the war of 1812 and he and adams are talking about this because it's like richard's

00:51:28.160 there why is he you know doing this and putting himself in danger so you really get to see

00:51:32.820 the early years of america and especially what's interesting is this is the time when american

00:51:37.160 history wasn't taken seriously by americans you know i mean independence hall wasn't called

00:51:42.320 independence hall until the 1820s when lafayette came back and and started they started talking

00:51:48.180 about american history because america had been around long enough that they could think about

00:51:52.140 its history you know independence hall was going to be knocked down the liberty bell was going to be

00:51:55.980 melted because no one thought that any of it was that interesting so as america became a real

00:52:02.240 country that was going to last which they all weren't sure it would then people started

00:52:06.820 understanding that its history was going to matter and so i feel like i've met a really human

00:52:12.640 version of the american history of this country and i'm really grateful to have it one and two

00:52:18.440 it really you know i did a lot of this stuff during the last years of the obama administration

00:52:23.120 and during the trump administration that's what i was writing and you know it's really important

00:52:28.220 when your country is tearing itself apart to understand the history of that and to be able

00:52:33.820 to put it in context and to know that it's horrible but it's not that new and it's american

00:52:39.560 and it is in america to survive it and you learn that from rush and alizander hamilton screaming at each

00:52:48.440 other on the streets of philadelphia in 1791 you learn you know you learn that from the fact that this

00:52:53.460 country was built on people screaming at each other and so that i have to say i found very comforting

00:52:59.300 and i've also just found rush really interesting to me for everything that i learned about him

00:53:03.300 i've learned many more things since the book came out i mean rush's story wasn't that well documented we

00:53:09.000 did i hope a pretty good job in the book uh but we've continued to do research we put up a with pen

00:53:14.960 we built a benjamin rush portal so that people could get easy access to everything that rush wrote

00:53:19.920 that's digitized and we've actually been working with the uh national archives and with university

00:53:25.800 of virginia rotunda press to try to get rush's letters to be all available for free so people

00:53:31.360 can read them and read his autobiography because they're key parts of the american story and a lot

00:53:36.620 of people don't know where to go read them they've seen the quotes from them but i've read a lot of

00:53:42.320 history books by well-known historians where they're quoting secondary sources on things that are in

00:53:47.440 rush's writing i assume because they can't get a copy of the original piece so we're trying to get

00:53:53.300 people so they can access rush's actual letters rush's actual commonplace books rush's actual

00:53:58.960 memoir and see what he wrote to be able to put those things in the proper perspective but i must say

00:54:04.160 it's not just because because yellow fever covid made yellow fever seem really interesting and

00:54:09.460 politics made uh you know a lot of rush things seem really interesting you know rush is just a

00:54:14.460 different way of seeing american history and i think a comforting way the way i think of it is

00:54:18.760 this you know rush wasn't a politician he was a doctor so politicians see problems differently than

00:54:25.720 doctors do i think politicians see problems as things that if they pass a law the problem will go away

00:54:31.260 and doctors know that isn't true that in every generation disease comes and that their jobs do the

00:54:38.520 best job they can and to innovate within that and to see the history of the country through the eyes

00:54:43.940 of a physician who is a politician second rather than somebody who's a politician or a businessman

00:54:49.940 first is a real different way to see the country and i find it to be a more comforting way to see the

00:54:55.960 country well steven this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work

00:55:00.140 well you know the book is called rush it's it's anywhere you want to find it i have a website at

00:55:05.420 www.stevenfried.com s-t-e-p-h-e-n-f-r-i-e-d.com and uh links to all the other stuff that that i do come

00:55:14.640 from that website and you know i would just encourage you you know read about rush get

00:55:19.400 interested in whatever entry point he is interesting for you because he it's over a long period of time

00:55:24.780 there's lots of different subjects that he gets you to but each of them brings you a better

00:55:29.320 understanding of the country you live in now and how it got to where it is all right well steven

00:55:34.360 freed thanks for your time it's been a pleasure thank you my guest today was steven freed he's

00:55:39.160 the author of the book rush revolution madness and the visionary doctor who became a founding father

00:55:43.860 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about

00:55:46.860 his work at his website stevenfried.com also check out our show notes at awm.is slash rush we find links

00:55:52.520 to resources we delve deeper in this topic

00:55:54.460 well that wraps up another edition of the awm podcast make sure to check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - June 27, 2022

The Fascinating Life of America's Forgotten Founding Father

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