Rush, Benjamin

   (1746–1813)

   Called "the father of American psychiatry," Rush was born in Byberry, Pennsylvania, the son of a gunsmith. He began the study of medicine, as was common in those days, as an apprentice, then in 1768 graduated with an M.D. from Edinburgh University. (It is therefore unsurprising that he was influenced by the ideas of William Cullen.) From 1769 until his death he served as physician to the medical faculty of the College of Philadelphia, and after 1787 was occupied with the care of the mentally ill in Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. In 1791, he initiated the first course of psychiatry lectures in the United States. His 1812 book, Medical Inquiries and Observations upon Diseases of the Mind, is said to be the first psychiatry text by an American born in the United States. Notably, in 1776 he was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence. He was a strong advocate of bleeding in the relief of psychiatric illness and also recommended an early form of psychological therapy, namely, the "eye": "The first object of a physician, when he enters the cell or chamber of his deranged patient, should be to catch his EYE, and look him out of countenance. The dread of the eye was early imposed upon every beast of the field. The tiger, the mad bull, and the enraged dog, all fly from it; now a man deprived of his reason partakes so much of the nature of those animals, that he is for the most part easily terrified, or composed, by the eye of a man who possesses his reason" (Medical Inquiries, 3rd ed., 1827, p. 173).