Benjamin Rush

“ Simple anatomy is a mass of dead matter. It is physiology which infuses life into it. A knowledge of the structure of the human body occupies only the memory. Physiology introduces it to the higher and more noble faculties of the mind. The component parts of the body may be compared to the materials of a house, lying without order in a yard. It is physiology, like a skilful architect, which connects them together, so as to form from them an elegant and useful building. ”

“ A Turk lives wholly to himself. In point of time he occupies only the moment in which he exists; for his futurity, as to life and property, belongs altogether to his master. Fear is the reigning principle of his actions, and hope and joy seldom add a single pulsation to his heart. Tyranny even imposes a restraint upon the stimulus which arises from conversation, for “They speak (says Mr. Volney) with a slow feeble voice, as if the lungs wanted strength to propel air enough through the glottis to form distinct articulate sounds.” ”

“ The fever had a malignity and an obstinacy which I had never before observed in any disease, and it spread with a rapidity and mortality far beyond what it did in the year 1762. Heaven alone bore witness to the anguish of my soul in this awful situation. But I did not abandon a hope that the disease might yet be cured. I had long believed that good was commensurate with evil, and that there does not exist a disease for which the goodness of Providence has not provided a remedy. ”

“ It must afford no small pleasure to a benevolent mind, in the midst of a war which daily makes so much havoc with the human species, to reflect that the small-pox, which once proved equally fatal to thousands, has been checked in its career, and in a great degree subdued, by the practice of INOCULATION.
It is foreign to my purpose to deliver to you the history of this art, and to mark the various steps that have attended its progress to its present state of improvement. ”

“ From the explanation that has been given of the instances of supposed contagion of the yellow fever, we are compelled to resort to certain noxious qualities in the atmosphere, as the exclusive causes of the prevalence, not only of that fever, but (with a few exceptions) of all other epidemic diseases. It is true, we are as yet ignorant of the precise nature of those qualities in the air which produce epidemics; but their effects are as certainly felt by the human body as the effects of heat, and yet who knows the nature of that great and universal principle of activity in our globe? ”

“ Much less is it necessary that the means of life should be prescribed in a dead language, or dictated with the solemn pomp of a necromancer. The effects of imposture, in every thing, are like the artificial health produced by the use of ardent spirits. Its vigour is temporary, and is always followed by misery and death.
The belief that the yellow fever and the plague are necessarily mortal, is as much the effect of a superstitious torpor in the understanding, as the ancient belief that the epilepsy was a supernatural disease, and that it was an offence against Heaven to attempt to cure it. ”

“ Do we observe the memory, the imagination, and the judgment, to be affected by diseases, particularly by madness? Where is the physician who has not seen the moral faculty affected from the same causes! How often do we see the temper wholly changed by a fit of sickness! And how often do we hear persons of the most delicate virtue, utter speeches in the delirium of a fever, that are offensive to decency or good manners! ”

“ Avoid measuring your services to your patients by scruples, drachms, and ounces. It is an illiberal mode of charging. On the contrary, let the number and time of your visits, the nature of your patient's disease, and his rank in his family or society, determine the figures in your accounts. It is certainly just to charge more for curing an apoplexy, than an intermitting fever. It is equally just, to demand more for risking your life by visiting a patient in a contagious fever, than for curing a pleurisy. You have likewise a right to be paid for your anxiety. ”

“ Thousands of lives have been sacrificed, by that faith in their efficacy, which has led to the neglect of domestic cleanliness. Distressing as these evils are, still greater have originated from them; for a belief in the contagious nature of the yellow fever, which is so solemnly enforced by the execution of quarantine laws, has demoralized our citizens. It has, in many instances, extinguished friendship, annihilated religion, and violated the sacraments of nature, by resisting even the loud and vehement cries of filial and parental blood. ”

“ The moral faculty is to the conscience, what taste is to the judgment, and sensation to perception. It is quick in its operations, and, like the sensitive plant, acts without reflection, while conscience follows with deliberate steps, and measures all her actions, by the unerring square of right and wrong. The moral faculty exercises itself upon the actions of others. ”

“ To obviate this supposition, we shall first attend to the effects of a single disease in those people who are the principal wheels in the machine of civil society. Justice has stopt its current, victories have been lost, wars have been prolonged, and embassies delayed, by the principal actors in these departments of government being suddenly laid up by a fit of the gout. How many offences are daily committed against the rules of good breeding, by the tedious histories of our diseases, which compose so great a part of modern conversation! ”

“ I once believed, upon the authorities of travellers, physicians, and schools of medicine, that it was a highly contagious disease. I am now satisfied this is not the case; but, from the greater number of people who are depressed and debilitated by poverty and famine, and who live in small and filthy huts [47] in the cities of the east, than in the cities of the United States, I still believe it to be more frequently communicated from an intercourse with sick people by the morbid excretions of the body, than the yellow fever is in our country. ”

“ Every pain, at such a time, is the beginning of the disease; for it always acts first on debilitated parts of the body. From an ignorance of this law of epidemics many persons, by delaying their applications for help, perished with our fever.
Let nature be trusted into no case whatever, to cure this disease; and let no attack of it, however light, be treated with neglect. Death as certainly performs his work, when he steals on the system in the form of a mild intermittent, as he does, when he comes on with the symptoms of apoplexy, or a black vomiting. ”

“ I exclude therefore the intelligent principle of Whytt, the medical mind of Stahl, the healing powers of Cullen, and the vital principal of John Hunter, as much from the body, as I do an intelligent principle from air, fire, and water.
It is no uncommon thing for the simplicity of causes to be lost in the magnitude of their effects. By contemplating the wonderful functions of life we have strangely overlooked the numerous and obscure circumstances which produce it. Thus the humble but true origin of power in the people is often forgotten in the splendour and pride of governments. ”

“ I met with one man of 84 years of age, who had been intemperate in eating; and four or five persons who had been intemperate in drinking ardent spirits. They had all been day-labourers, or had deferred drinking until they began to feel the languor of old age. I did not meet with a single person who had not, for the last forty or fifty years of their lives, used tea, coffee, and bread and butter twice a day as part of their diet. I am disposed to believe that those articles of diet do not materially affect the duration of human life, although they evidently impair the strength of the system. ”