WM. BARTON, Esq.
---
_Dr. Benjamin Rush._
The foregoing Memoirs were entirely completed and prepared for the
press, before the decease of this Professor occurred; as is mentioned in
the preface.
Benjamin Rush was born in the county of Philadelphia, on the
twenty-fourth day of December, 1745, O.S. Having graduated in the Arts
at Princeton College, in the autumn of the year 1760, and afterwards
studied medicine under the direction of the late John Redman, M. D. of
Philadelphia, he completed his medical education at the University of
Edinburgh; where he received the degree of Doctor in Medicine, in the
spring of 1768. Returning to Philadelphia in the summer of 1769, he was,
on the 31st of July, in that year, appointed Professor of Chemistry, in
the College of Philadelphia; that chair having been supplied for some
time before, by the late John Morgan, M. D. F. R. S. &c. About twenty
years after this appointment (viz. in 1789), he succeeded Dr. Morgan in
the Professorship of the Theory and Practice of Physic, in the same
College: and in the year 1791, on the union of that College with the
University of Pennsylvania, he was chosen Professor of the Institutes
and Practice of Physick, &c. in the conjoint institution.
At divers times, and on various occasions, his talents were employed in
affairs of political concern. Besides having held, at different periods,
several other public stations, he was appointed a member of Congress for
Pennsylvania, on the 20th of July, 1776: when he, together with some of
his colleagues, appointed at the same time, subscribed the Declaration
of American Independence; which great national act had received the
sanction of congress, and been generally signed by the members, sixteen
days before.
He died of a typhus fever, in Philadelphia, on the 19th day of April,
1813; being then advanced a few months beyond the sixty-seventh year of
his age.
At the time of his decease, Dr. Rush was Professor of the Institutes of
Medicine, of the Theory and Practice of Physic, and of Clinical
Medicine, in the University of Pennsylvania: to which chair, vacated by
his death, Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton, Professor of Materia Medica,
Natural History and Botany, in the same institution, was elected in the
month of July, 1813.