Benjamin Rush Collection, 1804-1972

Summary

Abstract:
The collection contains original student notes, ephemera, and prints in addition to photocopies and microfilm reels of Rush's lectures delivered to medical students at the University of Pennsylvania from the Library Company of Philadelphia. The collection has four series: Rush's Lecture Notes, Students' Notes of Rush's Lectures, Microfilm, and Prints and Personal Ephemera.
Extent:
9 boxes 18 microfilm reels 5.51 linear feet
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

The collection contains original student notes, ephemera, and prints in addition to photocopies and microfilm reels of Rush's lectures delivered to medical students at the University of Pennsylvania. He lectured from 1789 to 1813. However, most of his lectures are undated. Rush lectured primarily on physiology, but many of his lectures are oriented toward psychiatry, and these are the ones the editors copied. Only his lectures which focus on psychiatry are included in this collection. He lectured by reading from a draft fully written out in pamphlets of various sizes. As he used them year after year, he rewrote, modified, and deleted; when the pages finally reached a state of confusing chaos, he usually would prepare a new draft. Rush began lectures on animal life in 1791. The majority of the collection consists of notes Rush prepared himself; in addition, there are extensive notes of Rush's lectures taken by nine of his students; seven are signed and two sets are by unidentified students. The collection has been divided into four series: Rush's Lecture Notes, Students' Notes of Rush's Lectures, Microfilm, and Prints and Personal Ephemera.

Biographical / historical:

The collection contains original student notes, ephemera, and prints. In addition, in the 1960‘s and 1970‘s, Eric T. Carlson, M.D., Jeffrey L. Wollock, M.A., and Patricia S. Noel, Ph.D. secured copies of Benjamin Rush's lectures housed at the Library Company of Philadelphia. A microfilm copy was made of selected lectures related to psychiatry. Some of the more pertinent lectures were then photocopied from the microfilm. The book the three editors prepared, Benjamin Rush's Lectures on the Mind, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1981 contains a further narrowing of lectures chosen from the photocopies. Researchers who wish to quote from the lectures must obtain permission from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Benjamin Rush was born in 1746 near Philadelphia and died in 1813. He began his study of medicine in Philadelphia in 1761 and studied with Drs. John Redman, William Shipper, and John Morgan. In 1766, he started his medical education at the University of Edinburgh. Here he was influenced by William Cullen, Munro, Secundus, Joseph Black, and John Gregory. Rush returned to Philadelphia in 1769 to practice medicine and teach chemistry. In addition to his lifelong pursuit of his medical practice, writing, and teaching, he was president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and was involved in the acceptance of the Constitution in Pennsylvania. He condemned public and capital punishment, advocated temperance, favored an improved education for women, and wrote essays on his other concepts of social reform. In 1786 he established the first free dispensary in the country, and he is regarded as "the father of American psychiatry." For over thirty years he treated patients with mental illness at the Pennsylvania Hospital, and published the first American book on psychiatry, Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind, in 1812. Rush's response to mental illness was clearly medical. He lectured on the senses, on the mind, on sleep, and on dreams. His theory emphasizes the medical importance of the human mind. Rush's lectures on psychology are excerpts from a larger course known as the Institutes of Medicine. The Institutes as a course of lectures originated at the University of Leyden, Holland in the early 1700's. Most of Rush's lectures and writing on psychology arose from his activities at the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and from his treatment of mental illness at the Pennsylvania Hospital, where he had assumed a great amount of responsibility in 1783. Rush's influence ranged far. Before 1790 he had 16-45 pupils each year. In 1791, the year he began the lectures which form the collection, he had 72 students. He reached his peak shortly before he died, for in 1810, 369 students registered for his course. He taught approximately 3,000 students and apprentices total, mostly from the mid-Atlantic states.

Acquisition information:
In the 1960‘s and 1970‘s Eric T. Carlson, M.D., Jeffrey L. Wollock, M.A., and Patricia S. Noel, Ph.D. secured copies of Benjamin Rush's lectures housed at the Library Company of Philadelphia. A microfilm copy was made of selected lectures related to psychiatry. Some of the more pertinent lectures were then photocopied from the microfilm. The book the three editors prepared, Benjamin Rush's Lectures on the Mind, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1981 contains a further narrowing of lectures chosen from the photocopies. Researchers who wish to quote from the lectures must obtain permission from the Library Company of Philadelphia.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

There are no access restrictions on this material.

Terms of access:

Researchers who wish to quote from the lectures must obtain permission from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

Location of this collection:
DeWitt Wallace Institute of Psychiatry: History, Policy and the Arts
Weill Cornell Medical College
525 East 68th Street, Box 140
New York, NY 10065, United States
Link to repository site
Contact:
212-746-3728