Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds by Thomas Apel

Author:Thomas Apel [Apel, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science, General, History, United States, Revolutionary Period (1775-1800), Medical
ISBN: 9780804797405
Google: IMPTwAEACAAJ
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2016-03-30T22:24:19+00:00

FIVE

“In Politics As Well As Medicine”; or, The Arrogance of the Enlightened

Nor grieve that slander, with malicious rage,

Fierce war against thy glory wage:

Beneath a grim, ferocious sway,

Palmyra’s ruins gloom’d the desert way;

But wide o’er earth their fame forever flies;

Amid their venerable shade,

Oft hath the musing pilgrim stray’d

There, oft, the Genius of the waste,

Wanders, & thinks upon the past;

Counts o’er the mouldering piles, & sighs

Nor yet, tho’ factions’ busy imps defame,

And load with every word of shame,

Think that the offspring of thy mind,

Was e’er for mischief’s evil designed1

ELIHU HUBBARD SMITH, 1795

When Benjamin Rush resigned from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1793, an institution he helped form only a few years before, he cited the “persecutions” he suffered from the fellows of the college as justification. “Besides combating with the yellow fever,” he fulminated to his wife, Julia Rush, on September 13, “I have been obliged to contend with the prejudices, fears, and falsehoods of several of my brethren, all of which retard the progress of truth and daily cost our city many lives.”2 Days later, again to Julia, “They have confederated against me in the most cruel manner and are propagating calumnies against me in every part of the city.” He continued, “If I outlive the present calamity, I know not when I shall be safe from their persecutions. Never did I before witness such a mass of ignorance and wickedness as our profession has exhibited in the course of the present calamity. I almost wish to renounce the name of physician.”3 The “calumnies” directed against Rush focused principally on his “heroic” treatment—the bloodlettings and purges that left his patients dazed and depleted.4 By November 5, when Rush tendered his letter of resignation to John Morgan, the president of the College of Physicians, the epidemic had all but ended; he might have expected the abuses from his colleagues to have ended too.

Yet, to Rush’s chagrin, the persecutions continued. As he saw it, the contagionists had conspired together and were attempting to commandeer the yellow fever discourse not only by disparaging their opponents but by disseminating falsehoods that deceived the people. By 1797, the contagionist “faction,” as he liked to call it, had grown so bold in its intrusions—and so successful in having its quarantine restrictions enacted—that Rush and his localist friends founded the Academy of Medicine of Philadelphia, an institution meant to rival the contagionist-controlled College of Physicians. The Academy of Medicine would liberate both physicians and the public from the tyranny of the contagionists, thereby rescuing unprejudiced medical inquiry. Rush wrote to Noah Webster, explaining the meaning and importance of the Academy: “All those physicians who believe in the domestic origin of yellow fever . . . have lately formed themselves into a medical society for the purpose of promoting medical science untrammeled by the systems of medicine which now govern the greatest part of the Physicians in our city.”5 For the rest of the epidemic period, both the College and the Academy published opposite explanations for the cause of yellow fever.

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